Practice 30 Microsoft Finance Internship interview questions covering Excel modeling, financial analysis, and behavioral scenarios.
Question 14 of 30
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Why the Interviewer Asks This Question
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Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
"There was a time where a coworker had me proof their work. I went into looking over their project looking for an error in their findings, so I immediately noticed a discrepancy, but like them, I had difficulty tracing it back to their source. They said they went over their calculations and couldn't figure it out. So I went in assuming I would quickly identify their mistake, but I went over it three times. Then I realized, in my arrogance, I was simply assuming I would be able to identify quickly what they missed in their calculations. Knowing I have keen attention to detail, I realized I was missing something, but, like them, I was looking in the wrong place. Then I combed over the information they compiled. We examined it together, and we were able to determine that the error existed before they extrapolated the data from its source. Amid the research on which they based their project, two numbers had been transposed. Digging deeper, we discovered this discrepancy was the source of another problem our management had been working on. Tying our issue to theirs, we corrected the course of two projects, rather than just one. All I did was dig deeper, tracking it to its source and along with the directions, it branched out."

Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
The interviewer is gauging your attention to detail and is curious about how you handle your work with diligence and accuracy. How you answer will clue them in to the level of your skills.

Kevin Downey has an extensive background in business management, recruiting, branding and marketing. He's volunteered his career coaching services at job fairs, lecturing on interview techniques and crafting winning resumes and cover letters.
Talk to the interviewer about your level of attentiveness when it comes to details on the job. This comes down to a combination of technical skills and aligning all the necessary facts and figures to a conclusive result. Items you want to touch on in your answer are your organization skills and your methodology or approach to project management, the level of your attention to detail, and the standard you set for your work.

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Written by Kevin Downey
30 Questions & Answers • Microsoft

By Kevin

By Kevin