LIKELY QUESTIONS
- How does your 15+ years of finance experience prepare you to manage the National Construction Fund, particularly budgetary provisions, levy administration, and expenditure control?
- Describe your experience managing public or regulated funds. What controls did you put in place to ensure accountability, compliance, and accurate reporting?
- The role requires consolidating revenue from contractor charges and levy proceeds under the Act. How would you strengthen revenue collection, reconciliation, and reporting processes?
- How have you handled year-end financial reporting, including receipts, savings, accruals, and fund balances, in a complex organization?
- Tell us about your experience in asset management and safeguarding assets acquired through statutory or fund operations.
- What financial and operational risks do you foresee in managing the National Construction Fund, and what mitigation measures would you recommend?
- How do you ensure compliance with public finance regulations, audit requirements, and governance standards while still supporting efficient service delivery?
- NCA expects a leader with integrity and understanding of national goals and policies. How would you align the Fund's financial management with NCA's regulatory mandate and Kenya's broader development agenda?

BEHAVIOURAL QUESTIONS
- Tell us about a time you identified a major financial control weakness and fixed it.
Model approach: Situation: Briefly describe the weak control environment, such as leakages, delayed reconciliations, or unsupported payments. Task: Explain your responsibility to strengthen controls without disrupting operations. Action: Outline how you reviewed processes, introduced segregation of duties, tightened approvals, automated reconciliations, trained staff, and monitored compliance. Result: Quantify improvements such as reduced audit queries, faster reporting, lower leakages, or improved compliance ratings.
- Describe a time you led a team through a high-pressure audit, inspection, or regulatory review.
Model approach: Situation: Set up the audit context, tight deadlines, and key risk areas. Task: Clarify your role in coordinating responses and ensuring accurate documentation. Action: Explain how you assigned responsibilities, reviewed evidence, engaged auditors professionally, resolved gaps quickly, and kept leadership informed. Result: Highlight outcomes such as clean audit areas, reduced qualifications, timely submission, and strengthened stakeholder confidence.
- Give an example of a time you improved revenue collection or financial reporting in your organization.
Model approach: Situation: Describe fragmented collection channels, poor visibility, or delayed reports. Task: State your mandate to improve completeness, accuracy, and timeliness. Action: Show how you mapped revenue streams, standardized procedures, improved system controls, enforced reconciliations, and used dashboards or periodic reviews. Result: Share measurable gains such as higher collection rates, fewer variances, and faster management reporting.
- Tell us about a time you had to uphold integrity despite pressure from senior stakeholders or external parties.
Model approach: Situation: Describe the pressure, for example to bypass procedure, approve unsupported expenditure, or overlook non-compliance. Task: Explain your obligation to protect public funds and comply with policy. Action: Show that you relied on regulations, documented concerns, escalated appropriately, proposed lawful alternatives, and remained professional. Result: Emphasize preserved compliance, avoided loss or reputational damage, and reinforced an ethical culture.

SMART QUESTIONS TO ASK
- What are the top three priorities for the Manager, National Construction Fund in the first 6 to 12 months?
- What are the biggest current challenges in levy collection, revenue consolidation, and expenditure control within the Fund?
- How is success in this role measured - for example through audit outcomes, revenue performance, reporting timeliness, or risk management improvements?
- How does the Fund interface with other departments such as legal, compliance, procurement, internal audit, and ICT to support financial governance?
- Are there any ongoing reforms, system upgrades, or policy changes affecting the Fund that the successful candidate would be expected to lead or support?

RED FLAGS TO WATCH FOR
- Vague answers about governance, controls, or reporting lines, especially if they cannot clearly explain how the Fund is audited, monitored, and approved.
- Signs of political interference or pressure to bypass procedures, particularly around levy administration, procurement, expenditure approval, or recruitment.
- Lack of clarity on systems, staffing, or resourcing, which may indicate major accountability expectations without the tools or authority needed to deliver.