Explore Jobs
Find Specific Jobs
Explore Careers
Explore Professions
Best Companies
Explore Companies
Interviewing for a systems analyst position requires a fairly unique approach, as the role requires a series of both hard and soft skills.
Not only will you have to demonstrate the relevant technical qualifications for the job, but also prove that you have important general skills such as effective written communication and time-management.
In this article, we’ll provide you with the most important questions you need to prepare for before any interview for a systems analyst position. We’ll explain what points the interviewer expects you to touch upon, as well as how to answer in a clear and effective way.
Looking for a job? These position are hiring now near you:
Here are some of the most common questions you’ll likely face during an interview for a systems analyst position:
Explain the basic role of a computer systems analyst. With this prompt, the interviewer wants to check that you understand two things:
The end goal is to satisfy the client. All design choices should target the end goal of providing a user-friendly environment that satisfies the business needs of the client.
The crucial tools and skills involved. The interviewer also wants to make sure that you understand the specific day-to-day duties and skills expected out of systems analysts.
Your answer should succinctly target both of the above points.
Stress your understanding of putting the client first by stating the need to find cost-effective solutions that are adaptable and user-friendly.
Emphasize the need to create detailed specifications that are still easy to understand for end users.
Throughout your answer, briefly mention one or two more specific solutions to prove that you know what you’re talking about.
Example Answer:
“The systems analyst should use methods such as conducting a feasibility analysis to evaluate the user requirements.”
Walk me through the process of analyzing an existing system. The most important tip to follow when answering this question is to prepare your items ahead of time and stay organized.
Conveying your ability to stay organized and divide a complex process into discrete steps is almost as important as showing that you possess specific technical skills.
Important elements of system analysis that you should mention include:
Define the system’s scope and objectives.
Analyze the system’s operating personnel and how they interact with the system’s finer details. This also includes factors such as whether they work remotely or on-site.
Create a base document that outlines the checkpoints, controls, and data flow of the system.
Conduct feasibility analysis and determine whether the system meets its intended goals.
Compare the cost-effectiveness to the newly proposed replacement system.
Tell me about a time when you had to design a system with limited resources. No matter what job you’re applying for, demonstrating that you can still perform under less than ideal circumstances will always greatly impress the interviewer.
As always with situational and behavioral questions, employ the STAR method when answering.
Your experience doesn’t have to come from another job on your resume. It’s fine to share a story from an internship, college project, or relevant job from a different field.
It’s also important to let your story be organic. Do not exaggerate the circumstances, even if it occurred during a lower-stakes entry-level position.
How do you react when user requirements are frequently changing? There are two things the interviewer really wants to know when asking this question:
You remain calm and patient despite troubling situations.
Your technical competency is strong enough that it allows you to stay flexible and adapt.
There are a few ways to answer this question.
You can directly address the two points above, stating that you understand the importance of always remaining calm and focused.
Follow up by providing some specific technical details as to how you would design the system in an adaptable way that allows for changes without a complete restructuring.
The other method is to use the STAR method and describe a prior experience that demonstrates both of these points.
What are the requirements that system analysts should gather and analyze? In contrast to many of the other questions, this one is purely technical.
There are two main types of requirements that systems analysts must analyze:
Functional requirements. These are specific details describing the intended function and behavior of any system.
Some major items include business rules, authentications, administrative functions, and transaction details.
To give a more concrete example, “the system needs to authenticate the user before returning X field” would be a functional requirement.
Non-functional requirements. Non-functional requirements focus more on the quality-based characteristics of a system.
For example, think of metrics such as performance, security, or scalability.
These don’t describe the system’s actual behavior and logic, but rather attributes such as how many users can use it concurrently or how secure it is.
It’s a good idea to cite projects you contributed to in the past that had you implement or analyze such requirements.
Have you ever created a diagram or flowchart to describe the operational steps of a system? Systems analysts are just one critical piece in a development or maintenance team.
Your ability to analyze a system is useless if you can’t communicate that information to programmers, stakeholders, and upper managers.
Answer this question by first affirming your understanding of how important visual representations are as a tool for communication.
Next, briefly describe your typical process for creating an effective flowchart to show your ability. Also mention an experience in the past where you used one as a communication tool with success.
Share one of your recent experiences working on a development project. When answering this question, make sure to:
Use the STAR method. The STAR method is always the most effective way to touch on all the key points the interviewer wants to hear, while remaining brief and clear.
Target the job description. Choose an experience that’s relevant for the job opening.
If you know you’re going to be working with a large team and multiple departments, pick a similar project.
If the job listing mentions any particular tools or methodologies, demonstrate your competency through your answer.
Focus on both hard and soft skills. It’s important to speak about the technical solutions you used, but keep in mind systems analysts typically support development and maintenance teams.
Try to mention how your communication skills allowed you to interact with both programmers and non-technical stakeholders.
Mention results. Don’t just say what you did and what tools you used; impress the interviewer by telling them of the positive result.
Mention items such as the improved performance of the system or the cost-savings it brought to your business or a client.
What should systems analysts document? It’s important for systems analysts to keep clear, detailed documentation about their findings.
This is not just for the sake of any current project, but for future teams years down the line who will need to refer back to your documentation when making upgrades or migrations.
You need to let the interviewer know that you understand this importance, as well as speak about the specific items to document.
Such items include:
Functional activities
User scenarios
Data flows
Classes
Interfaces between systems
How often do you think systems should be updated? In order to properly maintain and monitor a system, it’s important to periodically update it.
When answering the questions, first state the importance of updating systems and why it should be done. Mention reasons such as patching security issues and performing bug fixes.
How often a system should be updated depends on its complexity, as well as its use case.
Provide a general overview of the different types of systems you’ve worked with how the timeframe that you believe should exist between updates.
Generally, this should be a period of once every one to three years.
How do you explain complex technical problems to non-technical stakeholders? Your ability to perform this task is one of the most important factors that will determine how quickly you advance throughout your career.
The amount of costly and time-wasting miscommunication that occurs in the industry is notorious.
Highlight the importance of classic communication skills such as listening and truly understanding the needs of the other party and what they’re trying to convey.
With systems analysis, you should never assume that stakeholders have any basic level of technical knowledge.
Emphasize the fact that you never make this assumption, and that you use methods such as keeping a cheat sheet of technical terms around to help everyone understand.
Lastly, it’s important to bring up concrete examples when you’ve displayed your ability to clearly communicate complex subjects.
Back up your examples by mentioning the positive result and the efficiency with which it was achieved.
Why do you want to work at this company? One of the main reasons interviews ask this question is to make sure you’re not a job hopper.
Training employees that quickly leave is expensive, both in terms of resources and the disruption caused when they abandon projects.
Qualm this fear by aligning your interests and values with the company.
Mention a project that they’re working on that fascinates you or speak about the positive and diverse work culture that you’ve been hearing about.
This way, you’ll prove that you’ve done your research and have a genuine interest in the organization.
Tell me about yourself. This open-ended question often confuses even interviewees that knock difficult technical questions out of the park.
Before answering, know that the interviewer really wants to know three things:
What makes you unique. Even if you effectively answer every technical question, that may not set you apart from the experts that you’re competing with.
This question is intended to get a grasp of what your personality uniquely brings to the company.
How you react to questions without structure. The content of your answer is almost as important as the ability to answer without being flustered.
When you get the job, not every challenge presented will have clear solutions and routes to take.
Whether you can answer such an open-ended question is really a basic test of how you’ll rise to those challenges.
Your main skills. The interviewer wants to see how you define yourself and what abilities you’re most confident in.
Make sure that your answer touches upon all three of these points.
Providing a brief, light-hearted story about your career experience is a great way to demonstrate your skills while also conveying your unique personality.
Also, try to link who you are to how you can provide value to the company.
If you’re proud of some project you’ve completed, for example, bring it up and mention how those skills transfer well to their current projects.
How would you immediately react if the production shuts down? Systems analysts must know how to quickly and calmly react to disaster.
Lay out the actions you would take in clear steps.
For example, you should say:
“I would first identify the issue’s root cause. This could be an application, infrastructure, or database issue.”
“Next, I would check the database and analyze error logs.”
“Finally, I would use the logs to target the root issue and take the necessary steps to resolve it.”
Explain what client-server architecture is. Answer this technical question by giving a brief but informative definition.
Example Answer:
“Client-server architecture describes a model in which the service delivers, hosts, and manages the client’s services and resources.”
“As a distributed system, client-server architecture offers an efficient way to share the workload while also centrally controlling backup and security.”