What is your greatest accomplishment? Interview Question

You'll most likely be asked this question in most of the interviews. You know, the purpose of an interviewer behind asking such question is to assess which candidate stand out above the rest. He wants to ascertain what makes you stand out from the crowd. He tries to understand your personality, your humility when answering. He wants to know your professional success with such question.



Now, if you are applying for a job as an IT engineer and you are talking about your greatness in cooking or cycling, I'm sorry, you are not making the cut. And there are many who claim that their greatest accomplishment is that they were always on time for job. Don't say all that, that’s a minimum job requirement and not your accomplishment.

In order to convince the hiring manager that you are the best person for the job, you need to learn how to answer this question.

So, let's talk about a few key points that you need to follow to frame an impressive answer.

1. Feel confident and comfortable talking about yourself. Don't feel awkward talking about yourselves. You have to speak about your experience and skills. Remember, Selling yourself in an interview is not bragging or being arrogant. You need to share what you’re truly proud of professionally. But it's important to show humility and sound down to earth when answering.

2. Always make sure to talk about something that's as recent as possible. And, it would be really great if you can talk something relevant to this job. Please don't say that my greatest accomplishment is passing my driving test. Let's not bring irrelevant stuff. Instead, talk about career achievement. You can talk about challenges and responsibility. Explain the action you took to address the challenges. Describe the kind of outcome you achieved and try to make quantifiable results if possible. For example, you can say, my effort helped increase overall productivity by 25%.

And yes, after you answer this interview question, be ready for follow-up questions.

3. Your answer should be well structured. Don't bring unnecessary stuff in your answer. Always prepare your answer based on position and rehearse well before appearing for interview.   

4. Talk about work related achievements. If you talk about social, family, school or college level accomplishment, it would reflect as if there aren't any professional achievements.  

5. It's important to tailor your answers based on the position you are being interviewed. Remember, one format doesn't fit all.  

6. Stick to clear and concise answer and be honest.

There are a few mistakes that most of you commit, you need to avoid them. They are :

1. Avoid lengthy answer. That can be inconsequential. Just try to highlight key points and make things easier for hiring manager.  

2. Don't give a long list of accomplishment. Try to talk on latest achievement and stick to relevant one only.

3. Don't go unprepared. Prepare your answer well in advance in order to sound fluent and natural. This way you will know exactly what you are going to say

4. Avoid showing up and putting others down. Humility is an important traits. You should prove your worth with humility. And yes, don't use others to make your achievement impressive because that looks so unprofessional.

Now, let's have an example answer for this question.

Well, I think my biggest achievement was during my last job as a lead developer. Our team were working on iOS version of an app. We were already finding difficult to meet the deployment date. And unfortunately, one of the important member of the team left the company abruptly. It was a great setback for the team and all of us were tense for the project. But I took the challenge and worked over time on his module along with mine and we could finish the project on time. The app has gained more that 450 positive reviews and adding good sum of revenue for the company.

So, that was an example. I hope this will help you and using this you can compile an impactful answer for this question.