Evaluate candidates with 60 Power BI interview questions

Microsoft Power BI is a data visualization platform that provides data-driven insights for business functions. The platform offers a range of software, tools, and connectors that transform data collected from multiple sources into actionable insights. The dashboard of Power BI is capable of data visualization and reporting in various styles, like scatter plots, maps, charts, graphs, etc. It is also possible to access ‘AI Insights’ in Power BI to extract meaningful insights from large data sets.

The right candidate for the Power BI programmer job role has a blend of strong mathematical skills, knowledge of algorithms, and business acumen. To hire suitable talent according to the company’s needs, recruiters must have a strong strategy to screen and assess candidates for the relevant job role.

Explore Power BI questions and answers to evaluate potential candidates and make optimum hiring decisions.

1. Why is Power BI used?
2. What is a dashboard in Power BI?
3. Which data sources can connect Power BI to?
4. Explain what a Power BI desktop is.
5. Are managed enterprise BI and self-service different? How?
6. What are the top five features of Power BI?
7. Which components of Power BI are the most important? List five.
8. What differentiates Power BI from other business intelligence tools?
9. How to filter data in Power BI?
10. What essential applications does Power BI offer?
11. What are the limitations or disadvantages of Power BI?
12. What is DAX, and why is it important?
13. Explain the different connectivity modes in Power BI.
14. What are custom visuals, and how do you create them?
15. Differentiate between manual table relationships and automatic relationships.
16. How does data modelling differ from Pivot in Power BI?
17. What is Power Query and what does it do?
18. What is GetData?
19. List and explain the refresh options available in Power BI.

1. How is data stored in Power BI, and where?
2. Explain row-level security.
3. What critical features of Power BI make it important for organizations?
4. Explain three of the most important rules or concepts of DAX.
5. Which situations require custom visual files?
6. What data categories should be used in Power BI?
7. What are content packs?
8. What is data shaping?
9. How is a filter different from a slicer?
10. Differentiate between Import mode and DirectQuery.
11. What is the Excel BI toolkit?
12. Explain grouping.
13. How do you define query folding?
14. What are the functions of the Power BI Query editor?
15. What are the basic requirements for using Power BI?
16. Explain the CORR function and where it is used.
17. Why is it important to use general formatting with data in Power BI?
18. Explain how to change data types in DAX.
19. How to carry out dynamic filtering?
20. What is M language?
21. What is an embedded code?

1. Differentiate between report-level, page-level, and visual-level filters in Power BI.
2. What are the most common data-shaping techniques to use?
3. Which data is required to create maps in Power Map?
4. What are the different stages of the Power BI working system?
5. What are the parameters of Power BI?
6. How are New Measure and New Column different?
7. How can you toggle between two options to make them interact with the rest of the visualizations?
8. What are paginated reports?
9. How many active and inactive relationships are possible between two tables in the Power Pivot data model?
10. Explain the gateways in Power BI and what they are used for.

1. How do you design a Power BI dashboard to visualize the organization’s year-on-year growth in product sales?
2. Given data about customers, their purchase information, age, and gender, how do we visualize different customer segments, and the total spending?
3. There are more than 100 files that have information about the compliments and complaints received by customer service. How do we import the data into Power BI and create proper reports for the same?
4. How do we optimize how a Power BI report performs, given that it’s dealing with big data?
5. How do we visualize the overseas sales of a product, highlighting the geographic regions as well?
6. What steps can be taken to create a visualization that depicts the difference between the budgeted and actual revenue for different products?
7. How can we create a Power BI dashboard that tracks real-time inventory levels, identifies low-turnover products, and forecasts future demand?
8. What visualizations should be used to automate monthly financial reporting?
9. How to import data from social media data and which visualizations to use to showcase the impact of social media campaigns on brand awareness, website traffic, and product/service sales?
10. With access to sales figures, dates, product details, and regional information, which visualizations showcase the sales trends over time, compare the performance of different regions, and identify the best-selling products?

For a robust recruitment process, it is best to include the structured Power BI interview question round towards the end of the process after screening candidates and shortlisting the best potential hires. One of the best ways to identify skilled candidates from the pool of applicants is by administering a basic Power BI skills test, along with other relevant assessments. Skills tests and cognitive assessments can allow recruiters to gain a better understanding of the candidate’s job performance. They can also help determine if the candidate will be a good fit for the organizational culture.

A scientifically validated Power BI skills test helps recruiters assess the ability of candidates to prepare reports and visualizations in Power BI. Using the right online assessment can allow recruiting managers to identify highly qualified candidates from several applicants and ensure objective decision-making in hiring. The results of the assessment can streamline the entire hiring process and the number of candidates that reach the Power BI interview question round. The Power BI skills test can be administered along with domain- and role-specific tests, cognitive ability tests, personality assessments, and culture fit assessments for a more comprehensive understanding of a candidate.

Mercer | Mettl offers a robust platform that empowers organizations to assess, interview, and analyze candidates for Power BI developer job roles. The platform also includes a proctoring suite with AI and human-based proctoring capabilities that ensure cheating-free assessments. Organizations can also customize the Power BI assessments and other candidate evaluation solutions offered by Mercer | Mettl to suit their unique hiring needs. Select from easy, medium, or hard test levels for candidates with different levels of experience, add multiple skills tests and other assessments into a single online assessment, and add, edit, or upload any Power BI interview question into the assessment.

The Power BI platform is a powerful tool for organizations that converts complex data into visuals, digestible formats and actionable insights. At its core, Power BI helps organizations gain valuable insights into their business data, leverage real-time data to support informed decision-making and predict future outcomes. Hiring the right talent for Power BI programmer job roles within the organization is crucial, and it requires a mix of skills assessments and structured interview rounds.