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What were the most memorable
accomplishments in your last position?
"What
were the most memorable accomplishments in your last position?"
"What
were the most memorable accomplishments in your last career?"
Both of these questions can be answered with the same question. If you do not
have much experience, it might be hard to think of a good answer. Also, if your
previous job was very simple or followed a regular routine, then a memorable
accomplishment might be hard to think about. So take a lot of time to think of
anything. Because answering this question with nothing to say is basically the
only wrong answer. Here are some ideas. Did you save the company money? Did you
create a new process and put it into place? Did you break a sales record? Did
you meet a difficult deadline? You can use all of these types of experience for
this answer.
Short Answers
"I
remember the day I completed an audit from beginning to end all by myself.
Since I was an entry level auditor, this accomplishment really felt good
because it was my first major step."
"One
day our director came out of his office asking who wrote up the documentation
for ABC firm. I didn't know if he was upset or impressed. I said I did it and
he basically said, great job and went back to his office. This was memorable
because the director never did this before."
"The
most memorable accomplishment I had as a sales associate for a software company
was closing a deal worth $17 million. This was the second largest order our
company ever had and it felt like hitting a grand slam."
Long Answer
"My
last position was selling copy machines. I had one month where I broke the
sales record for a given month. I think that was a great accomplishment.
However, throughout the calendar year, I exceeded the average number of sales
by 20% ten out of twelve months. Having a great month is good, but I feel it is
a greater accomplishment maintaining solid numbers throughout the whole year."
"I
think the greatest accomplishment in my last position was implementing a simple
process that reduced the number of broken builds by 20%. Whenever we have a
broken build, it slows down work for 20 different people. That puts risk on
slipping the ship date. But my process involved following 25 steps prior to
building to ensure a successful build. The 25 steps only took 15 minutes to
complete and we reduced the number of build breaks significantly. It worked for
our product and upper management instructed other groups in our organization to
put this process in place. I really felt excited about that accomplishment."
These two examples are different. One is for a sales position and the second is
for a technical engineer position. Both of them are great accomplishments.
Sales is easy to answer because you can just throw out numbers and it sounds good.
The second is a little more difficult because you have to explain the situation
a little. But make sure you explain your scenario enough so the interviewer can
see the significance of your contribution. |