“What is your greatest achievement?” – Well where do I start! 

Bragging and boasting about ourselves and our successes is not generally something that most of us like to do. Being humble and perhaps somewhat modest tends to be a much more socially acceptable trait to display. However, in an interview environment, that should change. After all, in an interview, you are there to convince the employer that you are amazing – you are the one that they need for that vacancy.
And one interview question more than any other requires us to put that humbleness to one side, and become a fully fledged bragger – that old chestnut “ What is your greatest achievement?”
To help you answer this typical interview question, we have put together some useful basic tips.

Time
If when asked this question, you are drawing on something that happened a long time ago, you are not doing yourself any favours. If possible, try and refer to an achievement that happened more recently, in your last job, or in your most recent course of study. An employer needs to believe that you are the type of person who will bring value to their organisation. And if your best example of an achievement is something which happened 5 or 10 years ago, it may appear you are implying that you have not done anything of value since. Do yourself a favour and use a recent example.

Relevance
In a non-interview situation, most of us would probably truthfully answer this question by referring to some personal achievement – be it family related or otherwise. However in an interview, the interviewer wants to hear about your achievements which are directly related to their job role. Try and think about accomplishments and achievements that are linked to the duties of the job you are applying for. Speaking about a job related achievement is going to have a much bigger impact on the interviewer than any personal one, no matter how marvellous that may have been.

Continued on page 2…

Pages: 1 2