How To Answer 'What Is Your Greatest Accomplishment?' Like A Pro

I increased the yearly sales of a product by 5%.
I devised a new employee strategy that helped to reduce the attrition rate of the organization by 10%.
I successfully piloted the groundwork of a project, and it's currently in its execution phase.

These are some of the replies that job candidates give to the 'What is your greatest accomplishment?' question in a job interview. Being one of the common behavioral interview questions asked during a job interview, the job seeker needs to be well-prepared to handle this. So, apart from underlining your professional achievement, what more can you add to it to make your reply stand out? Let's find out!

Why Ask 'What Is Your Greatest Accomplishment?'

Every employer wants to find the perfect fit for their company. Hence, they are actually seeking candidates with specific skills and qualities who can blend well with their work culture to join their teams. Most of the behavioral questions in any job interview are thus directed toward getting a better understanding of the personality traits of the candidate.

'What is your biggest achievement?' question helps the hiring manager assess whether your talents and work ethic align with the company culture. While you are highlighting your best professional moments, the interviewer is actually trying to explore beyond your proudest accomplishments. For this, you need to structure the reply in a way that not only tells the interviewers about your career highs but also gives them an insight into your way of working, hard and soft skills, etc.

Answering 'What Is Your Biggest Accomplishment?' - Interview Tips

As stated before, ‘What is your greatest accomplishment?’ is one of the most common job interview questions. The best way to tackle this question is to keep a perfect answer ready for it beforehand! As they say, preparation is the key to success.

The first step to prepare is to have a list of accomplishments ready. Here are some questions you should ask yourself before you pick accomplishments worth discussing during the job interview:

In past roles, how did you contribute to the company's goals? Weigh your significant impact on important parameters such as sales, revenue growth, etc.
As a mentor, manager, or team player, what impact did you have on a team? Perhaps you assisted with the onboarding of an intern and helped to put them up for success, which benefited the entire company.
How did you assist a company in being more efficient? Perhaps you were in charge of streamlining processes by improving communication channels.
What steps did you take to make the client experience better? Perhaps you contributed to the development of a new user-centric solution.
If you're new to the workforce, have you ever taken the lead on anything while volunteering or in a student organization? Perhaps you organized a fundraiser, won a competition, or led a capstone project.
Along with professional experiences, you must also keep a non-work example ready to add to your reply in case the interviewer specifically asks so. For example, you completed a car rally or a long-distance trek, or you overcame a personal challenge.

Once you have a ready list, align your responses to the company goals to ensure you only share relevant stories.

Sometimes, it may be difficult to find an achievement that may be considered the 'greatest.' In such cases, it is best to go back to your research and view it through the eyes of the hiring manager you're hoping to impress or the job description of the position you are interviewing for. You can also highlight transferable skills that align with the company goals.

The STAR Technique To Answering 'What Is Your Biggest Achievement?'

As with any other common interview question, the tried-and-tested way to structure your answer is with a simple, relevant story arc. One of the ways that can help you structure your compelling story into a well-framed reply is the STAR method. The STAR method stands for Situation, Task, Approach, and Result.

The STAR (Situation, Task, Approach, and Result) approach concentrates on the most important aspects of your achievement and tells a memorable and succinct story to your interviewer that highlights your key skills. This method should be used to state your answers in front of the interviewers. Here is how the STAR method works:

Situation: Provide some context for your accomplishment in the initial portion of your response. You can start by describing the problem that your team or company faced.
Task: After describing your part in the situation. This could include the tasks you're in charge of, your position in a particular issue, or the abilities you provided that were useful.
Approach: Then, talk about how you helped to make an impact or solve a problem. An important point to observe here is to include the keywords from the job description in your story to make it relevant to the interviewer.
Result: Finish your response by describing the beneficial outcome of your work. If you can back up your claim with numbers (saving the company an X amount of money or increasing sales by Y%), your response will be accepted.

Below is an example of the same:

Situation - I believe my biggest achievement was during my last job as an HR manager. The issue was that the hiring department had difficulty locating specific files, especially during peak periods, and this took up a lot of time.

Task - My motive was to increase the productivity and efficiency of the system, bring down the operational cost, and thus save time spent on looking for documents.

Action - To streamline the process, I implemented a new team HR document management software that could also centralize file management within the department, manage to hire, and ease other small tasks.

Results - The outcome was that the time spent on looking for employee files was reduced by about 50%. The process of sharing documents between the departments became faster and smoother. Also, the entire team could instantly access the files they needed, which increased overall productivity.

As is evident by the above example, the STAR formula translates your biggest accomplishment into a concise but accurate answer. This, ultimately, helps in making your reply more effective.

"What Is Your Greatest Accomplishment?": Sample Answers

Here are two sample answers that you can refer to when framing a way to talk about your proudest accomplishment:

Your greatest achievement sample answer 1

"A professional accomplishment that I would like to bring to your notice is when I led the development of a new app in my previous role. In my previous job, our technology development team lost a member due to a move. For the iOS version of the app, he was the principal developer. Unfortunately, no one else on the team had experience developing apps for iOS. I volunteered to lead the development and deployment of the app because I had prior expertise in developing an iOS app. I collaborated with the rest of the team to develop and test the new app. I was able to complete the development 60 days earlier than expected. It's already accessible in the iTunes Store and has received over 350 good ratings, providing the company with a new cash stream."

Your greatest achievement sample answer 2

"In my most recent position, I was in charge of overseeing our new employee orientation and training programs. Regrettably, the information was uninteresting. Despite the fact that it was important knowledge for our new hires to have, we discovered that only 35% of them completed the training. On the course assessment questionnaires, we were also getting negative remarks. Based on industry best practices and input from the evaluation forms, I chose to restructure the training program to make it more relevant and exciting. Currently, 93% of participants have completed the training and have given positive feedback on their experience. My boss was so impressed with the changes that she asked me to conduct a training course in our New York office."

Answering 'What Are Your Achievements' - Mistakes To Avoid

The interviewer asks, "Tell us about one key achievement in your life." You're prepared to answer the questions since you prepared for it. But be sure to avoid the following common mistakes:

Rambling- Even if you're talking about a major accomplishment, a long-winded response will give the impression that you are unprepared for the interview. This is where the STAR technique will help you to keep your reply to the point yet effective.

Indecisiveness- If you can't determine which incidents to discuss, refrain from giving a long list of professional or personal accomplishments to the interviewer. Prepare your response ahead of time so you don't have to come up with an accomplishment on the spur of the moment.
Putting others down in order to boost your own self-esteem- Even if your accomplishment requires you to fix someone else's error, do not highlight their shortcomings or use them to make your accomplishment appear more spectacular.
Fabricating a response - If you don't have a relevant accomplishment to highlight, don't fall into the trap of fabricating your responses. Always talk about a real accomplishment or find a way to talk about any industry awards, capstone projects, or even minor achievements from your previous company that align with the current role requirements.
Irrelevancy: When recounting your proudest achievement, be sure to talk about one that aligns with the job requirements. In other words, even if it's a real accomplishment but has no significance for your current role or does not highlight requisite skills, then it's just a story. Thus, it's important to highlight relevant achievements.

Keep in mind, this question is not about the magnitude of the achievement but about evaluating your personal values and approach to future challenges.

The key is to prepare and practice your responses to such seemingly tricky questions so that they don't sound artificial. Remember, it is important to sound spontaneous. Even if you never get asked this specific question in the interview process, taking the time to consider your impressive accomplishments that highlight your core values will be worthwhile. It will not only help you prepare for future job interviews, but it will also make you better understand your work values as well as your past career path.

Related Articles:

Shreeya Thakur

Sr. Associate Content Writer at Unstop

I am a biotechnologist-turned-content writer and try to add an element of science in my writings wherever possible. Apart from writing, I like to cook, read and travel.