Say you’re asked this in a job interview:
Give an example of how you set goals and achieve them.
What will you say?
This is a softball behavioral interview question. You have the power to choose a story that highlights your very best selling qualities for this job—so use it wisely. Show them how you think, how you approach problems and goals, and how you can succeed. Always choose a professional example, NOT a personal one. Choose a story that relates as much as possible to a skill that is central to this job, so that they can easily see how your success in this story would transfer to success in this job.
A good goal that you reached could be anything:
- Completing an important project
- Gaining a key customer
- Improving a system or process
- Increasing sales
- Reducing employee turnover
- Implementing new procedures to improve X
- Improving the company’s reputation for customer service
Tell your story using a STAR format:
- Situation or Task (Set up the story—what happened? What was your goal?)
- Action (What did you choose to do and why?)
- Result (What happened as a result of your actions? Quantify this wherever possible.)
For example:
Situation –
“I was assigned X project. It was a complicated project with lots of moving parts, and had to be completed in 90 days.”
Task or Action –
“I set a goal of getting the project done in 80 days so we’d have time to make corrections or deal with problems that came up along the way. To keep things running as efficiently as possible, I assigned parts of the project to 5 different teams, with check-in meetings every week. I was able to coordinate their tasks and minimize downtime.”
Result –
“Because of the way I set it up, we completed the project on time and 10% under budget. Our Vice-President was so impressed, I received a company award and presented my process at the next company meeting so that other managers could learn from it and implement it, too.”
Your story should clearly demonstrate how you added value to the organization through your actions.
Use numbers, dollars, or percentages to quantify this added value and add a lot of strength to your answer.
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This question and answer is just one of the 101 job interview questions and answers in my ebook How to Answer Interview Questions II, available on Amazon. (Along with the Keys to a Great Interview!)
If you know there’s a job interview in your future, I encourage you to get this book (How to Answer Interview Questions II) as well as the first book, How to Answer Interview Questions. Both books have 101 job interview questions and answers that will have you ready to stand out in any job interview and get the offer.
