Interview for Credit Control

irish life

I have an interview coming up for Credit Control Assistant. My previous work experience has consisted of summer work in retail and I've been working since November in the finance industry (stockbrokers and bank offices). I've never really had to deal with customers or clients in my previous office work. One of my duties as an administrator in a strockbrokers was query handling from clients but I never actually had to deal with any queries. Basically, I'll have to make that bit up since I put it on my CV.

Anyway, the agency told me to make sure I go through the company website and learn up about them. I've done this twice before and I've never had to use this information in an interview. How do I let them know I've read up about them?

I really want this job and am going to spend as much time as possible studying for this interview so if anyone has any credit control specific tips I'd be extremely grateful.

The following skills are required for this position:
• Competent in MS Word and Excel
• Excellent numeric ability
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills

As you can see they're not exactly looking for someone with loads of experience in credit control.

Thanks!

growler

as assistant, it may be that you're time will be spent chasing customers for payment to make sure that invoices are paid on time / early.

so you'll need to know:
what accounting / invoicing / payment systems software do they use
what kind of customers
typical invoice value / range
what volume of transactions
what payment terms they typically offer
what are the processes for flagging a potential problem debt
what has been the history of bad debt
are customers irish or intl. (what do you do if a customer is in china)

Easy enough to stress the things that would make you good at the role:
good communication with all sorts of different people , good phone manner and how well you understand the need to be polite, professional at all times.
your excellent ability to prioritise work
good numeracy skills (i.e. can add and subtract)

Having a look at their website should give you a reasonable idea of the product values / customer base , so you can demonstrate your enthusiasm by building these into your questions at the end

" I noticed you build Large Hydron Accellerators, where is the market for such complex machinery, how much do they sell for ? "


throw in an interesting story of how you managed to deal with a problematic customer at some point in your life


good luck

Bodhan

Growler, I hold interviews all the time and that's some of the best advice I've ever seen.

Irish Life, if you want the job you'd do well to follow the advice given:D

dudara

Good advice there.

I'll just throw in the idea of knowing:
how to obtain credit ratings for companies,
how to figure out a company's total exposure (outstanding invoices, orders delivered not yet invoiced, etc),
payments terms, aging buckets and statement/dunning cycles

irish life

Thanks for the help.

growler wrote: »

so you'll need to know:
what accounting / invoicing / payment systems software do they use
what kind of customers
typical invoice value / range
what volume of transactions
what payment terms they typically offer
what are the processes for flagging a potential problem debt
what has been the history of bad debt
are customers irish or intl. (what do you do if a customer is in china)

I don't quite understand. Are these questions I should ask the interviewer at the end?

coco85

Best of luck with the interview..

The advice above is absolutely excellent. I used to work in credit controll and absolutely loved it. I changed jobs about a year ago now and moved to work with a large multinational...

The interveiw tips on Monster.ie and recruit ireland got me through.. you should check them out.. obviously your enthuasism for the job should shine through and examples of dealing with difficult customers will be needed.

Think about what will be required of you in the job and then apply your current skills and experience.. this is one type of interviewing technique many companies use.

If you get the job just remember that even thought you may have to deal with difficult clients the satisfaction you get from getting the money is second to none!!!!...

Best of luck:)

growler

irish life wrote: »

Thanks for the help.


I don't quite understand. Are these questions I should ask the interviewer at the end?

yes