50 Power BI Interview Questions to Assess Candidate Skills (2023)

Are you looking for a qualified Power BI professional to join your team and support you with your business intelligence and data analysis projects?

If so, you're probably wondering what the best strategy is to accurately assess your candidates' skills and hire the best talent, even if you're not a Power BI expert.

Indeed, it is not an easy task: the best candidates must have the right combination of math skills, knowledge of algorithms and business acumen. To find the right talents, you need to evaluate them based on all these skills.

Despite these challenges, there is a surefire way to help you recruit the right talent for your business:

1. Evaluation of CandidatesKnowledge in Power BIand anotherjob-specific skillscommonOnline skills assessment tool
2. Select the best candidates with the right skills for the job and invite them for an interview
3. Using the right Power BI interview questions during the interview phase

Full list of Power BI interview questions

To help you with the final stage of this process, we've compiled a comprehensive list of 50 Power BI interview questions to help you accurately assess candidates' skills and strengths.

For your convenience, we've divided them into 3 categories based on the experience level required.

let's dive

19 Power BI interview questions for beginners

We'll start with 19 entry-level Power BI interview questions that you can use for entry-level or junior positions.

1. How would you explain what Power BI is?

in simple words,Power BI is a business application by Microsoftfor business analysis. With Power BI, you can transform multiple disconnected data sources into rich, structured data that provide insights. Data can be stored in an Excel spreadsheet or in the cloud and shared with others.

2. What are some of the benefits of Power BI?

There are some key benefits of using Power BI:

• The data visualization feature allows you to share knowledge and interactive data with others.
• Data can be quickly analyzed using Excel queries
• You can easily query reports
• It provides accurate solutions and analysis.

3. What are the disadvantages of Power BI?

Power BI does not allow the use of large files because the maximum file size is 1 GB.

Also, you cannot use many data sources that work with live connections and the data cannot be easily cleaned.

4. Who are typical Power BI users?

In addition to business owners, Power BI is also used by business developers and business analysts.

While business analysts analyze a company's data and create charts to represent it, business owners can use Power BI to view and explore the data. On the contrary, business developers help to develop applications by embedding data in different applications.

5. Explain what GetData is.

GetData is a Power BI function that allows the user to import data from its original source.

6. How is Tableau different from Power BI?

While both are two of the best data analysis tools out there, there are some key differences between them.diagramit's PowerBI.

diagramIt can handle large datasets and is ideal for experts. It has a complex user interface and is also cloud compatible.

On the other hand, Power BI can only handle smaller datasets, but due to the slightly simpler interface, it is suitable for both experts and beginners alike. Additionally, Power BI does not immediately support cloud integrations.

7. How would you explain what DAX is?

DAX stands for Data Analysis Expressions. These are formula languages ​​used to perform calculations and analyze data in Power Pivot. You can also use DAX to calculate calculated columns, measures, and fields.

8. How would you explain the CALCULATE function in DAX?

CALCULATE allows the user to evaluate the total value of a table column and evaluate expressions in modified filter contexts. It is a feature that allows users to customize the spreadsheet and, for example, calculate revenue or sales results for specific subsets of products.

9. What is the role of filters in Power BI?

Filters allow the user to divide critical data into columns and rows and use logical principles to filter data. The filters you can use include automatic, manual, verbose, verbose, and URL filters.

10. What does Power BI Desktop do?

Power BI Desktop is a free downloadable application that you can install on your local computer. Instead, Power BI is a SaaS product.

Similar to Power BI, Desktop allows users to easily visualize, transform and share data in a reporting form with the organization's stakeholders.

11. What connectivity modes can you access in Power BI?

You can access three critical connectivity modes in Power BI, direct query, live connect and import from SQL Server:

• direct advicecan only be used if you choose to connect to specific data sources and only store metadata
• live connectionsupports specific data sources such as SQL Server Analysis Services, Azure Analysis Services, and Power BI datasets
• SQL Server-Importarlets you effortlessly leverage the full breadth of Power BI Desktop

12. How would you define what Power Query is and what it does?

Microsoft developed the business intelligence tool Power Query, which allows users to import, clean and transform data.

All you have to do is write a query and run it after writing it. The main advantage is that you can import data from different sources.

13. Explain what custom images are and how to create them.

Power BI offers the ability to create custom visualizations, which are packages that contain code to help users visualize data. To create custom images, you need to use specific programming languages ​​like JQuery.

JavaScript is another programming languagethat you can use to create custom images.

14. What is the difference between data modeling in Power BI Desktop and Pivot?

While using Power Pivot for Excel can support an import model and calculated columns and a one-way relationship, Power BI Desktop has a few more features: It offers two-way connectivity and combines the capabilities of Pivot and Power Query.

Also, Power BI Desktop offers higher quality visualizations compared to Power Query.

15. Describe what a board is.

With the Power BI dashboard, you can visualize critical elements of a story based on data and access various reports. The data is presented clearly on the dashboard, which is usually only one page long. A dashboard contains tiles that users can pin to the page to show key data insights.

16. What types of data sources can be connected to Power BI?

Important types of data sources that can be connected to Power BI include databases such as Access, Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, Teradata and PostgreSQL.

17. How are manual table relationships different from automatic relationships?

There are two options for defining relationships between tables in Power BI. Users can define the relationships manually using the manual and foreign key functions or they can also define the relationships automatically.

18. How many active relationships can tables in Power Pivot models have and how many inactive relationships can they have?

For active relationships between tables, only one is possible for Power Pivot data models, represented by solid (not dashed) lines.

For inactive relationships, you can have multiples, indicated by dotted lines.

19. What skills can help you use Power BI?

In addition to analytical skills, you also need technical knowledge and knowledge of algorithms to use Power BI. you also need coding,numerical thinkingand math skills. A good understanding of business intelligence principles is also very helpful.

Here are 21 intermediate-level Power BI interview questions to choose from for your interviews. Use these when interviewing candidates with a few years of Power BI experience.

20. Can you describe how and where data is stored when using Power BI?

Most of the time, data in Power BI is stored in the cloud, usually in Azure. The two main types of Microsoft Azure cloud services include Azure Blob Storage and Azure SQL Database.

21. What are the critical features of Power BI?

Some of the main features of Power BI are:

• The ability to visualize data.
• The option to share viewed data with others in the organization
• The option to use an omnidirectional view to show all data collected from all sources
• The option to display output on multiple devices that can use Power BI

22. Can you name three important DAX rules or concepts?

Some of the most important DAX concepts are contexts, functions, and syntax:

• context. A row context applies to a specific row in a table when a formula function affects the row. In contrast, filter context applies when you apply multiple filters to a calculation.

• Function.Functions refer to values ​​or "arguments" that are used in a specific order to perform a calculation. There are a few different categories like Statistics, Date or Time, and Logic.

• Syntax.Syntax rules apply when creating a formula. If you do not respect the syntax, you may receive an error message.

23. When are custom visual files needed?

In certain situations it may be necessary to use a visual file if the pre-built packages don't meet your needs. To do this, you can hire a developer to create one for you that you can import and use to visualize important information for your team.

24. Can you name some types of data categories used in Power BI?

Some of the types of data categories used in Power BI include:

• Text, called data string
• boolean or logical, also called true or false type
• Number, which allows users to perform various functions such as B. Find the mean or a fraction of the data
• Date and time, to extract data such as time, year and month

25. What is grouping in Power BI?

In Power BI Desktop, you can collect and group (what grouping refers to) data.

To do this, select a set of elements by clicking on the elements while holding down the Ctrl key. Then select the grouping option by right-clicking the item. Grouping is also great for making changes to existing groups.

26. What does query doubling mean?

When you need to extract and modify data imported from multiple sources, the transformation phase requires query folding. An advantage of query folding is that Power Query has to perform fewer imports because the transformations take place at the data source.

27. What is the role of sensitive segmentation?

Reports generated by Power BI contain filter-like visuals that help users filter specific data. These visual filters are called slicers. A slicer allows users to choose specific values ​​while analyzing the report.

28. Can you describe what a content pack is?

Content packs in Power BI refer to the content you have in Power BI. In the package, you can see the data and reports you have. Packages, including your reports or datasets, can be shared with others on your team.

29. Can you describe what line security means?

Power BI offers the ability to restrict data access to specific users. This is achieved through the row security option, which works specifically at the row level.

30. What are the Power BI query editor features?

Some of the features offered by the Power BI query editor include:

• Data imports into a new group
• A parameter management option.
• The option to handle columns, rows and groups
• Options for renaming columns and replacing values
• The option to run R queries
• The option to use DAX formulas to add custom columns

31. Can you explain why you should use the common format for data when using Power BI?

When you apply general formatting to your data using the Power BI tool, it becomes much easier to categorize your data. You can also identify data quickly and work with the information more easily.

32. How do you change data types in DAX?

Most of the time, data types in DAX are converted automatically. For example, if you use a string for a numeric expression, that string will be converted to a number if the string is valid. However if there is a data mismatch issue where you have a text data type and the function needs a date type then it will not work.

33. What is M-language?

Like DAX, the M language (where "M" stands for mashup) is a Power BI supported language. M-Language is used to manipulate and filter the data and more specifically to combine different data from different supported sources.

34. Are Excel and Power BI compatible? What Power BI or Excel features make it easy to analyze datasets?

Since you can use Excel workbooks to create reports for Power BI, these two tools are compatible. You can also upload Excel workbooks to Power BI, as well as share reports with other team members via Power BI, making it easy to visualize your datasets.

35. What steps should I follow to perform dynamic filtering?

You would follow the steps below to perform dynamic filtering with Power BI:

• configure the data
• Publish a report to Power BI
• Publish the report to the group workspace
• Create a filter link
• Create a calculated column using a DAX formula to define column values
• Test and publish the summary report

36. Can you explain the bookmarks feature in Power BI?

If you want to capture a configured view of the current status of your report, you can use the bookmark feature to do this. Standard markers capture specific elements of your reports, including slicers and filters.

37. When would you use the selection panel? What does it allow you to do?

If you want to see all items featured on the page, use the checkbox. If you want to hide the images, you can also do that with the checkbox.

38. What does incremental update mean?

Incremental refresh defines splitting or separating data that needs to be refreshed frequently to refresh separately from data that does not need to be refreshed frequently. This means that with incremental updates only part of the data is updated.

39. Can you explain what the embed code is?

Embed code is used and created when you want to provide a link and share it with other users. These links are available for publishing data to the web and are powered by Power BI. They match the Power BI report.

40. How is LTRIM different from RTRIM?

While the LTRIM function allows you to remove spaces from the left side of the string, the RTRIM function allows you to remove spaces from the right side of the string up to the last index.

10 advanced Power BI interview questions

Finally, below are 10 advanced Power BI interview questions. These are suitable for senior or advanced level positions where candidates have extensive experience with Power BI.

41. Can you name some of the different filters in Power BI?

There are three main filters used in Power BI reports. In addition to report-level filters, there are also visual-level and page-level filters:

• Report Level Filtersallows you to filter the reports found on each page of your report
• visual filterare used to filter or restrict the data displayed by the visualization and only apply to visualizations
• Page-level filtersapply to specific pages – if you want to filter the data and define one page for one dataset and another for another, you can use page level filters for this purpose

42. What data would you need in Power Map to create maps?

Because Power Map can display visualizations related to geographic data, the user must submit certain information to Power BI, including the city, state, or town corresponding to the geographic location.

43. What steps will you go through when using Power BI?

There are a few key stages to go through when using Power BI, including data integration, processing, and presentation.

• data integrationis the process of connecting to the source of the data and extracting it
• process datarefers to the process by which Power BI takes note of missing or inaccurate values ​​and fully processes the data
• data presentationmeans that Power BI takes the data it gets from the source and displays it in visualizations or charts

44. Explain what SSBI is.

SSBI stands for Self-Service Business Intelligence. It's an approach that makes it easy to use Power BI without any special programming experience or technical knowledge. Because of this, SSBI makes Power BI accessible to many professionals.

45. Explain the difference between columns and calculated tables.

While calculated columns are ideal for data sources that you want to combine, calculated tables are useful for data that you don't want to share with other users.

I would use a calculated column to pull specific data from the columns I already have and a calculated table to do calculations that wouldn't be included in the final report.

46. ​​​​​​​​​​What do KPIs say in the context of Power BI?

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are essential visual indicators that show the progress made in work towards a goal.

They help companies define their goals and baselines when working towards a goal and also indicate the status threshold, which is the difference between the lower and upper threshold.

47. Can you name a few different gateways in Power BI? What should you use them for?

The two main gateways used for Power BI reports include an on-premises gateway and a personal gateway. While local gateways allow many different users to update data, a personal gateway can only be used by one person.

48. Which gateways should you use to update Power BI reports?

Another gateway that can be used is the Data Management Gateway, which can help the user to update reports in Power BI even after publication. You can also use the personal gateway to update reports on PowerBI.com.

49. How is self-service BI different from managed enterprise BI?

The main differences between self-service BI and managed enterprise BI are as follows:

• Self-service BI facilitates orderly data ingestion, while managed BI complicates data analysis due to time constraints.
• With self-service BI, companies do not need to communicate through a third party, while managed BI requires third-party interactions to fully benefit from their data sources.
• While self-service BI does not require deep programming skills, managed BI users must have the right programming skills to create reports.

50. What is the difference between MSBI and Power BI?

One of the main differences between MSBI and Power BI is that MSBI can handle large datasets whereas Power BI can handle datasets up to 10 MB.

MSBI cannot fetch data from the cloud whereas Power BI can. And MSBI can only create reports or visualizations whereas Power BI allows user to create models, dashboards and reports.

At what point in the hiring process should you use these Power BI interview questions?

We recommend that you use Power BI interview questions during the interview phase: at the bottom of your hiring funnel and after you've selected your best candidates for the interview.

To find out who your best candidates are andFilter unqualified applicants, you can use a skill rating of up to 5 differentskill tests. For example, combine aPower BI reviewWith someone elsefunction specific tests,cognitive performance tests, or even onePersonality and culture analysis.

Skills tests give you a better understanding of your candidate's skills and therefore can also help you develop appropriate interview questions and guide you through the hiring and application process.

Early identification of candidates who may not be qualified for the role (through an online competency assessment) saves time and money, reducing time to hire and cost per hire.

Combine competency tests with the right Power BI interview questions when hiring

Asking the right Power BI interview questions is critical to hiring the best talent. Finding the right questions can be difficult, which is why we've compiled this list of 50 Power BI questions above, grouped by experience level.

For best results, we recommend using the right mix of recruiting tools, e.g. an ATS,Pre-employment aptitude tests, and a detailed and structured interview. This will help you to reduce recruitment time,Avoid unconscious biasand hire the right Power BI expert for your organization.Try TestGorilla for free.