Answering What is Your Greatest Career Accomplishment
When asked in an interview “What is your greatest career accomplishment?”, the challenge is to provide a concise and meaningful answer, one that will show the prospective employer why you are the ideal candidate for the job.
Preparing for the Question
To best answer this question it is important to first consider the position you are applying for, and then think of a real example to showcase your competencies and accomplishments that are related to that role.
Accomplishments That Make an Impression
When answering this question, consider accomplishments that have left a lasting effect either financially or in terms of performance. Examples could be:
- Leading a successful project: Describe the challenge, the work you did, the results and the benefits to your employer.
- Improving efficiency: Describe how you looked for weak links in a process and improved them to increase productivity, cost-savings, or customer satisfaction rating.
- Saving money: Explain how you used solutions to save costs or renegotiated contracts for better terms.
- Finding creative solutions: Showcase how you found creative solutions to complex problems that helped your employer progress to the next level.
- Risk taking: Describe times when you have taken risks and the successes that you achieved.
- Setting and achieving goals: Showcase how you set goals and the steps you took to reach them.
Tailoring Your Answer
When you are prepared to answer this question, ensure that you relate it directly to the job and how you can be an asset. Start by explaining a brief overview of the accomplishment, followed by the impact it had on your employer and the reasons it made you proud.
Once you are done explaining your greatest career accomplishment, link this back to how this makes you the ideal candidate for the position they are trying to fill. Doing this will demonstrate the value you can bring to the role and create a strong impression on the recruiter.
