Diya C.
Operations Associate
SUMMARY OF EXPERIENCE
• 4+ years of accounting and financial operations experience and a recently qualified Chartered Accountant. She's currently working as an Accounts Executive at Turbolab Technologies managing full-cycle accounting operations.
• Whilst at Floraison India, Diya managed accounting and compliance for 5 IT clients simultaneously, achieving a 25% increase in financial accuracy and reducing audit completion time by 20% through improved processes and internal controls.
• Led process improvements that reduced financial discrepancy risk by 20%, prepared financial reports for executive decision-making, and trained junior staff whilst maintaining quality across client portfolios.
👍 What we loved about them
• Multi-system bookkeeping experience: She's worked across Tally, QuickBooks, Zoho Books, and GreaterChart during her articleship, handling end-to-end bookkeeping for five different clients simultaneously. Each client had their own software preferences and workflows, so she's had to adapt quickly and learn systems on the fly rather than becoming dependent on one platform.
• Genuinely calm under pressure: Throughout both the discovery call and the hour-long technical interview, even when we threw complex reconciliation scenarios and multi-task prioritisation questions at her, she maintained an even keel. There was no visible stress, no rushing through answers to get them over with – just steady, methodical thinking. She'd pause to gather her thoughts, and when she didn't know something, she'd say so plainly without getting defensive.
• Structured approach to work: Her approach to the 200-transaction scenario revealed someone who's developed actual systems through experience. She'd hide unwanted columns first to reduce visual clutter, check for duplicates before starting entry, highlight completed transactions as she goes to prevent re-doing work, then use VLOOKUPs after exporting to verify everything matched between the statement and QuickBooks. She also mentioned using the remove duplicates function as a final check.
ℹ️ Things to be aware of
• She's available to join immediately.
• She hasn't worked in property management or real estate before, so she'll need to get up to speed fairly quickly on sector-specific concepts – things like how to account for security deposits, lease payments, property maintenance expenses, tenant turnover costs, and how to use classes to track profitability by unit or property.
• She acknowledged that routine work with no growth would be a dealbreaker long-term, but also accepted that initial repetition is part of building competence. Ideally, she wants to expand into broader operational work eventually, but she's not demanding it from day one.
• She's clearly more comfortable working through problems independently and then presenting the solution rather than talking through her thought process in real-time – you can hear her thinking things through silently before articulating her answers, and she occasionally paused mid-explanation to reconsider her approach.
💁♀️ Where he may need support
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Although he lacks extensive experience with LinkedIn and Bing ads, his proficiency in Google ads suggests a high adaptability to new platforms.
👩💻 Technical interview performance
Objective
This candidate was invited to a 60-minute follow-up interview to assess their technical capabilities in more detail. During this interview, we assessed their critical-thinking skills, technical expertise, and overall conversational skills.
Technical abilities
• Technical accounting and QuickBooks proficiency [8.5/10]: Diya's got solid foundational knowledge when it comes to QuickBooks and basic bookkeeping. In the payment matching scenario, she worked out which invoices added up to $4,450 without any issues and walked through the receive payment process pretty naturally – mentioning things like selecting the right bank account and how QuickBooks shows remaining balances during matching. Her approach to the rent payment question showed she understands the difference between invoices and sales receipts, though she did pause to clarify whether rent was paid in advance or arrears before really diving in; once she had that sorted, she was fine. When dealing with the unrecorded insurance withdrawal, she correctly pegged it as an expense rather than a bill since the payment had already gone through, and she knew to verify the approved amount before just entering it blindly. We also really liked how she handled the duplicate check scenario – she'd actually investigate by checking bank statements first rather than just deleting one of the entries immediately, and she understood why documenting the correction matters.
• Excel and data management capabilities [8.5/10]: Diya's Excel skills are genuinely strong, and they feel practical rather than just theoretical. When we threw the classic "why won't my numbers sum" problem at her, she immediately knew it was a text formatting issue – which tells us she's dealt with this headache before. She offered multiple ways to fix it too, from VALUE and SUBSTITUTE formulas to the simpler Find & Replace approach, and she applied the same logic to sorting date issues using Text to Columns. In the practical reconciliation exercise, she used VLOOKUPs to compare the bank statement against QuickBooks, but here's what we genuinely appreciated – she didn't just trust her formulas blindly. She manually checked her work to make sure everything was accurate and her Excel workings were clearly organised with proper labels.
• Prioritisation and independent problem-solving [7.5/10]: Diya showed sensible judgment with the multi-task scenario. She correctly flagged the facility manager's query as top priority since someone was actively waiting for an answer, then logically sequenced everything else – entering rent payments before the bank reconciliation since the rec would need those entries to match properly, and making sure the founder's expense summary was done by end of day as requested. Her troubleshooting approach for payment mismatches was practical: check for missing invoices, look for rounding differences, then reach out to the customer if things still don't add up. She also showed good instincts about escalation – like flagging unusual insurance charges to the founder rather than assuming they're fine and just recording them.
Areas of growth
• Her main development areas are building speed alongside accuracy, getting more comfortable working with ambiguity, and strengthening how she verbalises technical concepts. These are all things that typically improve quite quickly with regular practice in the role, especially when working with engaged founders who give feedback.
• She does ask clarifying questions before moving forward, which is generally fine, but in a remote role where founders aren't always immediately available, she'll sometimes need to make reasonable assumptions and crack on whilst flagging uncertainties for later.