After clearing CA Inter starts the long process of travelling from one CA firm to another, dropping CVs and appearing for interviews. While I have already shared a post on the soft skills, this post is on how to sharpen your hard skills to ace your interviews. Read on for some tips and guidance...
The Interview Process
The CA articleship interview process differs from one CA firm to another. Some prefer only one round of face-to face interviews, while in the bigger firms, there are typically 3 rounds - HR round, 1-2 technical rounds and Psychometric/Behavioral test. The technical rounds typically are the easiest to crack. Why so? The answer is simple. All the answers to questions asked during these rounds would be known to you. You basically just need to listen and understand the question and start answering. The only googly questions would be the application-based ones, which obviously will need to be answered on the basis of your theoretical knowledge of the subjects.
What are Hard Skills?
Hard skills refer to all the knowledge and learnings acquired through education, observation and practice. So all that you have studied till CA Inter would form part of your hard skills. How good you are at these hard skills will obviously depend on your understanding, grip, memory and application of mind.
What Areas Need Specific Attention?
You would realize that the scope of hard skills is quite vast - anything read/studied/observed from the day you were born will conceptually get covered within the ambit of hard skills. So let's talk from the practical angle, specifically for the task at hand - clearing articleship interviews. Obviously, revising everything you have studied till date is not possible. So let us prioritize a few areas (indicative list) which you can put special focus on:
This is just an indicative list, in no particular order:
Fundamentals of Accounting Standards - including the fundamental assumptions, accounting concepts & conventions
Schedule III to Companies Act, 2013 - Financial Statements
Direct tax - PGBP, CG, Salaries, Deductions,
Basics of GST
Basics of Audit
Standards on Auditing
Recent amendments in Law/DT/GST - Keep following news and read business newspapers like Economic Times, Business Standard or Mint
Some basic MS Excel - best to watch some YouTube videos
In addition to the list above, you should do some prior background research about the firm, if possible.
Conclusion
It is needless to say that in an interview, the interviewer is at the liberty to ask anything and everything under the sun. However, most interviewers generally do not want to grill you on academics if your results already speak on your behalf. Generally, the interview revolves around concepts and application of concepts from your CA Inter syllabus. There could be some questions on recent amendments, so staying aware of what is happening around you is indispensable in today's day and age. My suggestion would be to start reading a good business newspaper as a habit. A simple 15-20 minutes read everyday will keep you in good shape to answer any questions on current affairs.
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Thanks for reading :)