Interview Questions – ‘What is your greatest achievement?’

For Service-leavers who haven’t got recent interview experience, the prospect can seem daunting. Here, we dissect another of the more common but no less difficult interview questions so that you can show your best side to interviewers and land your next post-Services role.

What is your greatest achievement?

Why ask?
This is like an entire interview wrapped up in a single question since the answer will ideally demonstrate what you feel is important, how you work, your values and view of success, as well as soft/people skills and ambition.

Ultimately, your answer needs to be a banner for what makes you stand out from the other candidates.

Relevant
The challenge is how you narrow it down to one or select something that speaks of all you’ve achieved.

Start with relevance to the company and specific role you’re aiming at. Ideally, your achievement will fit in with both – and for extra points reflect their culture or company ethos and values at the same time.

Professional
Choose a professional achievement unless – and this is rare – a personal achievement is particularly relevant to the role. 

Cracking ‘Crazy Joe’s Big Barbecue Menu Challenge’ is not the kind of answer you’re looking for.

Consider how you’ve influenced positive change or become a successful mentor, for example. 

Personal
Remember the interview is designed to probe and test you, so they might decide to extend this line of questioning. If you are asked for a personal achievement, consider reflecting on a time when you reached a major goal, such as tackling a triathlon or overcame a personal challenge – again linking it to values. 

Tell the story
The achievement you’re outlining doesn’t matter that much. The meat of the answer should be in the process behind the achievement. What was the situation? What task were you set to tackle it? What specific action did you take and what were the results?

Mentioning keywords like leadership and innovation helps. Providing numbers and statistics regarding your success really helps.

Lose the modesty
British people are conditioned from a young age to practice humility rather than ‘showing off’. Ditch this tradition for the duration of your answer.

Honesty
As usual, honesty is the best and safest policy. While it’s tempting to exaggerate, you can easily find yourself tangled up in your own tale. Anyway, this is a job interview and nobody is expecting you to have solved the mystery of perpetual motion.

Keep it simple and recent. Don’t fall into the trap of recalling a bigger achievement from years back in favour of a perfectly satisfactory answer from a few weeks ago. This is about who you are today.

Avoid indecisiveness
Don’t throw out several possible answers and expect the interviewer to choose the one they think is best. Your choice is the critical aspect of the question.

Say it with confidence
If you don’t believe it, nobody else will.

Behavioural questions
These are questions designed to help the interviewer understand your past performance, and how you handle specific situations, such when you are under pressure.