職場系列｜US Tax Associate面試準備

以下是我為兩場英文線上面試準備的36道英文題目及參考答案，答案因應剛畢業的身分而主要圍繞在學校和實習經歷。雖然答題內容已不太適用於有工作經驗且希望轉職的職場前輩們，但對於非社會新鮮人仍可參考其中的口說表達方式，並套用到自身經驗中。

答案中涉及面試公司名稱部分均已替換成A或B，而需延展的部分也以…呈現。個人認為相對重要（需多思考）的題目則以加粗斜體字表示，希望對即將準備英文面試的各位有所幫助！

面試過程

1. Tell me about yourself.

Hi, I'm Chrys, a recent graduate from National Taiwan University where I completed my bachelors in Accounting. On top of being an Accounting major, I'm also a person who has the advantages on learning with enthusiasm,
listening actively and communicating in English.

During my university years, I've chosen various courses as my elective courses, such as Application of Tax Laws , Fiscal Law and etc. For me, learning is the best way to make me more than I am now. And I know that A provides an excellent learning opportunity, which really attracts me.

Thanks to my extracurricular activities, I possess an active listening ability to collaborate with team members. In my sophomore year, I took charge of organizing a gathering for nearly 80 people with EY. Through this experience, I paid attention to the instructions from the senior and learned how to organize an event from scratch.

Regarding my English communication skills, I scored overall 7.5 and 955 in IELTS and TOEIC respectively. Also, I was an intern of translation in A and B to strengthened my English ability.

So, I believe that the combination of my accounting background and advantages mentioned above(enthusiastic about learning, active listening and English communication) can make me an ideal candidate for US Tax Associate.

2. Walk me through your resume.

Well, as you can see from my resume, I'm a fresh graduate from National Taiwan University. In my university, I majored in Accounting. And I look forward to finding a job that requires both accounting and tax knowledge, therefore I've chosen various courses as my elective courses, such as Application of Tax Laws , Fiscal Law and etc. during my university years. Furthermore, I took part in many extracurricular activities which help me cultivate an active listening ability to collaborate with team members. For example, in my sophomore year, I took charge of organizing a gathering for nearly 80 people with A and I learned how to organize an event from this special experience.

3. How did you hear about this position?

Well, I knew about this from…. I'm interested in this job so I come to apply for it.

4. Why should we hire you?

Well… I might be young and lack of experiences, but I'm full of enthusiasm about learning how to apply the knowledge I learned in the university in practice. And I understand that US accounting principle and tax law are different from those of Taiwan; however, I'm well prepared to seize the chance of learning and exploring new things as US Tax associate. Also, I possess excellent English skills to communicate with clients from the US. Good teamwork spirit is one of my advantages as well. I can bring my enthusiasm and my abilities to …

5. What can you bring to the company?

I know A is looking for US tax associate who has accounting background and excellent English communication skills, because A serves US clients with accounting and tax needs. So, I would bring my knowledge and the ability to communicate in English to A. Also, with my active listening ability, I can provide good teamwork spirit to the company and collaborate effectively with team members.

6. What are your greatest strengths?

I would say that one of my greatest strengths is that I never give up easily. In my freshman year, I remembered that most of my classmates, including me, failed the first calculus exam. Many people decided to withdraw from this course after getting their results. But I persisted and did my best to improve my grade, such as practicing the exercises of the textbook three times and asking teaching assistants questions after class. Finally, I got 96 in my final and passed this subject.

7. What do you consider to be your weaknesses?

To be honest, my perfectionism is one of my weaknesses. Sometimes, I'm afraid of making mistakes; I require excellence in every task and afraid of disappointing the team. For instance, I did a presentation about business mergers and acquisitions with my classmates last year. When it was my turn, I spoke a bit too fast, and I was worried that my performance would affect our score. After class, one of my team members told me that it wasn't a big deal. No one is perfect, now I consider every imperfection to be a precious learning experience and what's more important is that I don't do the same mistake twice in the future.

8. What is your greatest professional achievement?

I would say my greatest accomplishment was that I successfully organized the gathering with A while preparing for the final intermediate accounting exam. I managed to study and organize the event at the same time. I remembered clearly that I did my best to save time, like typing my essay on the phone while waiting for bus and queuing. Eventually, I had not only gotten target score in my exam, but also learned how to communicate with the HR and the owner of restaurants during the process of the gathering's preparation.

9. Tell me about a challenge or conflict you've faced in university, and how you dealt with it.

Well, in my freshman year, there was a time that my group members and I had to do a performance in our Chinese lesson. One of the members named Kiki had different opinions about the script and quite insisted on doing it in her own way. At first, the atmosphere was tense in the group. After I tried to communicate with her and understand her ideas more deeply, I found out that her ideas was actually better as we could perform more vividly. In the end, I navigated our group to the same direction. From the experience, I realized that different opinions shouldn't be seen as negative things to a group, but a new chance to do the thing better.

10. Tell me about a time you demonstrated leadership skills.

I was a senior member of Cancer Children Club two years ago, and the club was preparing a winter camp event for recovered children and their siblings back then. I was assigned to design an adventure game for kids. As a senior member, I had led my team members to complete the designing process together. I would listened to everyone's opinion first, and then discuss which was the best to be carried out. Moreover, I kept track of the group's process and updated it to those who couldn't join the discussion. Although our camp was canceled due to the pandemic, it was still an unforgettable memory to me.

11. What's a time you disagreed with a decision that was made at work?

When I was a student volunteer of A, I coordinated editing the monthly magazine with the senior editor named Judy. One day, I titled an article, but Judy changed it all after reading it. The title was changed into a longer version which I considered to be inconvenient for the readers to remember, and that was the first time I expressed my disagreement to Judy. Although my opinion was not accepted, Judy thanked me for sharing a different idea to her. From this experience, I realized sharing my own voice was a powerful act no matter it was accepted or not.

12. Tell me about a time you made a mistake.

It happened when I was the intern of A. Due to the pandemic, all employees had to upload their self-health condition to the system of the company every day. However, I was on sick leave one day and thought that I didn't have to upload since I had already taken a day off. My senior called me and asked why I didn't upload, that was when I realized I've done a mistake which caused troubles to the HR who was responsible for this duty. This was not such a huge mistake, but I learned from this lesson that I should confirm things in advance afterwards.

13. Tell me about a time you failed.

I'm not good at any sports, but I had the desire to learn swimming, so I chose the swimming class as my PE two years ago. Everyone in the class except me has already learned swimming before, so passing the swimming test was a piece of cake to them. To pass the test, I never skipped any swimming classes and even got up at 6 am every morning to practice swimming. My hard work paid off in the first test, but I failed the second test which was held in the deeper outdoor swimming pool. I was disappointed at myself when failing the test as I got panic in the middle of the pool. However, I knew that I had done my best to achieve it so that I had no regrets. Think for the better, I know how to swim!

14. What type of work environment do you prefer?

I prefer a working environment that emphasizes work-life balance and it's family-friendly, just like A. To me, the accomplishments at work and the family are both important in my life; therefore, I look forward to working in a place that allows me to strike a balance between these two things.

其他可替換的短句：allows me to experiment/ strengthen my analytical and organizational skills.

15. What's your work style?

I tend to do my best work when I'm collaborating with team members and we're working together toward a common goal. It's happier when you've done something great with the whole team than achieving it alone.

16. How do you deal with pressure or stressful situations?

I stay motivated by thinking about the end result. I've found that even in the midst of a challenging situation, reminding myself of my goals helps me take a step back and stay positive.

17. What do you like to do outside of work?

In my leisure time, I enjoy climbing mountains. This activity helps me relieve my stress and work more efficiently. When seeing the beautiful view at the peak, I gain the power to keep moving on and stay positive in my life.

18. How do you stay organized?/How do you prioritize your work?

I stay organized by making a to-do list before I start working. Making the list helps me stay focused on the priority, keep track of what I've done and see whether there's any improvement I can make.

19. What are you passionate about?/What motivates you?

I really love climbing mountains. It might be difficult before reaching the peak, but once I reach, I know that it's worthy. It's just like reaching the goal of our life, we'll face lot of obstacles and disappointments; but as long as we have perseverance, we can make our life totally different.

20. How do you like to be managed?

I like working with managers who allow their employees to experiment, be independent, and work cross-functionally with other teams. At the same time, I really welcome it when a boss provides me with support, guidance, and coaching.

21. Do you consider yourself successful?

I do consider myself successful, even though I'm early in my professional career. I seized every chance to learn different things in my university years, such as choosing courses from different departments. Also, I joined various clubs to explore myself and know my own self better. Those club experiences also taught me teamwork spirit which I can't learn from books. With my academic accomplishments and the ability to collaborate, I really consider myself to be successful.

22. Where do you see yourself in five years?

In five years, I'd like to be in a position where I know more about my longer-term career aspirations. As I gain more experiences and abilities, I'm able to achieve bigger goal and have a better living quality with my family as well.

23. What would your first few months look like in this role?

I believe there's still a lot for me to learn, so I will do my best to learn about US tax and accounting principle in the first few months. And I also will collaborate with my team members to provide great services to our clients.

24. How do you plan to achieve your career goals?

My current goal is to be familiar with US Tax and accounting principle, so that I can be more effectively in completing the task as an US Tax associate. In order to achieve it, I will do my best and seize every learning opportunity I have.

25. What are your career aspirations?

My career aspiration for now is to get CPA so that I'm fully certified and prepared to contribute in my job. Making myself more professional to provide better services to anyone who believe my profession is my biggest aspiration.

26. What's your dream job?

As a recent graduate, I'm interested in work that involves tax and accounting in terms of job content. Most of the time, I learned these knowledge from books; therefore, my dream job is to apply them in practice and learn more about them professionally.

27. What other companies are you interviewing with?

I do have an interview with A for US tax associate position. But based on what I know, B position has exactly the kinds of challenges I'm looking for.

28. What makes you unique?

I'm a person who loves to learn new things and never give up easily when facing obstacles. Always do my best and be ready to stand up again when falling down. Take my immigration to Malaysia at the age of niene as an example, It could be frightening for a young kid to live in a country she was not familiar with, but I made it through and even gained an ability to speak Malay. I would say resilience is my biggest uniqueness.

29. Why don't you go for a further degree?

The main reason is that, for now, I don't know exactly which professional area that I wanna do research or explore more deeply. So I'd like to work first, and after gaining more knowledge and experiences from my career, maybe I will be able to figure out more clearly the field that I wanna make advancement, then I would decide whether I should apply for a master's degree or not.

30. What should I know that's not on your resume?

Well, one thing you won't find on my resume: the special experience of immigrating to Malaysia at the age of 9. My mom is Malaysian and our family moved there due to some family issues when I was little. That's when I started to learn simplified Chinese and Malay. This experience is a treasure to me as I gained the opportunity to learn a new language and had the environment to speak English more frequently as well.

面試尾聲

1. What are your salary expectations?

Taking into account that I'm a fresh graduate, I'm looking for between… and… monthly for this role.

2. What do you think we could do better or differently?

I know that A offers great services to clients; however, I think email writing could be more meticulous as I had received two emails with a wrong name and wrong date respectively.

3. When can you start?

Anytime/ I'm excited for the opportunity to join your team. But I prefer to start….

4. Are you willing to relocate?

I'm more than happy to make the move for the right opportunity- and this job, with great learning environment, is definitely that.

5. Is there anything else you'd like us to know?

I think we've covered most of it, but just to summarize, it sounds like you're looking for someone who can serve the clients with accounting knowledge and excellent English. And with my previous experience, I was an Accounting major and have excellent English communication skills, I think I'd be a great fit.

6. Do you have any questions for us? （可擇二作詢問）

進入到求職者提問環節會轉換成中文對談，所以下方以中文作答：

• A的經營理念是提供員工一個work-life balance的工作環境，那想請問除了提供員工彈性工時外，還有什麼其他的具體措施嗎？
• 有什麼能力是我能在onboard之前加強補足以更勝任職位？
• A職位一天的工作流程大概是長怎樣？
• 了解二月中到四月中屬Tax season會有overtime情形，想請問加班模式是怎樣的呢？
• 想請問教育訓練具體是包含哪些呢？

本文搬運自個人Medium 2023.04.26舊文