At the end of the day, price is still the deciding factor for the majority of customers, in most product segments. People care for quality, design, warranties, and other product characteristics. But most of us struggle with money, and we have to make wise purchasing decisions to make sure we’ll have enough money to pay our bills, and keep our head above the water. Corporations understand the crucial role proper pricing plays in the success (or failure) of any product. They hire professionals who will specialize in price analyses, and everything that belongs to it.
Interviewing for a job of a Pricing Analyst, you can except to face a combination of personal, behavioral, and technical questions. Hiring managers will inquire about your goals and motivation, attitude to various situations you may face in the job, and they will typically also ask you a couple of basic data analysis questions, to make sure that they have the right person in the room. Let’s have a look at the questions.
Why do you want to work as a Pricing Analyst?
Pricing analyst is yet another corporate role, in which you’ll spend your days in front of a computer screen, gathering data, analyzing them, and creating reports and meaningful suggestions for your colleagues from the product department. Nothing exiting in my view, but you may see it differently, and even if you do not, you should show some excitement in your interview.
You can tell the hiring managers that you’ve always enjoyed working with numbers, and excelled in Math, Statistics, and in similar subjects. What’s more, you understand the crucial role pricing has in the lifecycle of every product, and the impact you can have with your analytical work. This excites you more than other corporate roles, and so you decided to give it a go and applied.
You can also talk about relevant experience (if you have any), or about some career goals you have, things you’d like to achieve in the corporate world. In any case, they should hear some enthusiasm in your voice. They shouldn’t end with an impression that you have no idea why Pricing Analyst, and simply apply with them because you need any decent corporate job to kick-start your career.
Tell us about your experience with data analysis or pricing analysis in particular.
Honestly speaking, you do not need any previous experience with pricing analysis to be able to handle the job. All corporations have excellent processes in place, room for creativeness is almost non-existent (especially when we talk about entry level jobs), and they will show you how to take care of your duties. You will learn it on the job.
Nevertheless, some experience is always a plus, especially when you compete for the job with many other candidates, which is often the case with entry level corporate roles. You can talk about software programs you’ve worked with, or point out a successful analyses you conducted in your last job, or even at school (for example while working on your thesis). You can add a “terminus technicus” here and there, such as a name of a statistical function or of a time row analysis method you used while working on the data analysis.
And if you have no experience at all, you can simply say that you believe in your excellent match skills and intelligence. You will learn how to do your work in no time, especially with the excellent training program they have in place (as you’ve learned while preparing for the interview…)
* May also interest you: Budget Analyst interview questions.
How do you imagine a typical day in the job of a Pricing Analyst?
The most important thing is to show realistic expectations. You should not dream of doing more than you’d do, and you should be happy about your role in the corporation.
Say that you imagine spending 90% of your days staring at the screen of your laptop, working with data. You can go more into detail, talking about researching the prices of your employer’s competitors, seasonal trends for each product, and then comparing and analyzing the data, trying to figure out the right price for each product. You can also talk about working with analytics your employer uses on their website (for example Google Analytics), working with engagement data, trying to identify patterns, and again come up with suggestions for the product managers.
Just like any other corporate rat, you’ll spend part of your days in the meetings with other members of the product department, answering emails and phone calls and stuff. But the majority of time you’ll spend in front of your computer, and you should be all right with that.
Tell us about the best analysis you’ve ever done.
This is your chance to show off, and also to show right attitude to your work. You should pick an analysis that resulted in some important suggestion for the managers. They followed your suggestion, and as a result the company saved a lot of money, or made a lot of money. That’s the attitude they seek in the best job candidates–you should focus on results you achieve for the business.
When describing the best analysis, you can show off your knowledge of relevant software applications, as well as statistical analysis (explaining your methodology of work, why you chose a certain function and not another one, for example).
Describe a time when you had to meet a tight deadline.
You won’t find any big corporations without fast-paced working environment in the third decade of 21st century. Your manager will set goals for you, and you will often have to meet a tight deadline with your analysis or report.
Keep on your mind that they care mostly about your attitude, and not about whether you eventually managed to meet the deadline from your story. As long as you show them that you do not mind working overtime when facing a tight deadline, and can organize your work properly and do everything you can to not fall short of meeting the deadline, they will be satisfied with your answer. You can also check 7 sample answers to this popular interview question.
Other questions you may face in your interview for a job of a Pricing Analyst
- What is your experience with dynamic pricing?
- In your opinion, what matters most in our product segment: price, quality, marketing, or anything else?
- Describe a conflict you had with one of your former colleagues.
- What are your expectations on product managers and other people you will cooperate with?
- Where do you see yourself in five years from now? Is there any position you’d like to have?
- Tell us about an obstacle you overcame.
- When you had to work on multiple projects (analyses), how did you prioritize?
- What is the biggest mistake you’ve made in your career?
- Give an example of a time when you showed initiative at work.
- Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision without all the information you needed.
- What can you offer us that someone else cannot?
- Why shouldn’t we hire you?
* If you are not sure how to answer the questions from my list, or experience interview anxiety, have a look at our Interview Success Package. Up to 10 premium answers to basically all questions you may face in your pricing analyst job interview will help you streamline your interview preparation, find the right words in every moment of the interview, outclass your competitors, and eventually get the job. Thank you for checking it out!
Conclusion, next steps
Just like in any other interview for a well-paid corporate job, you will compete with many other people while trying to get a position of a Pricing Analyst. Competition makes your interview automatically difficult, regardless of the questions they will ask you.
The questions won’t be easy though. You will have to demonstrate right attitude to all sorts of situations that can happen in any corporate workplace, your knowledge of statistical analysis, and also your motivation to work hard and deliver exceptional results.
Go through the questions once again, and try to prepare at least a short answer to each one. And do not forget to check also other resources online, and do a good research about the corporation before the interview. I hope you will succeed, and wish you best of luck!
Matthew
May also interest you:
- Product analyst interview questions – Some of them may overlap with questions for pricing analyst and you should check them out.
- Marketing analyst interview questions.
- Financial analyst interview questions.
