“What is your most significant accomplishment?” A tough graduate interview question

This interview question can also be phrased as “What is your greatest achievement?”, “What is your greatest accomplishment?”, or “What is your proudest accomplishment?”. The thing is, it can be hard to pick a real personal or professional achievement when most of your life has been spent in education. Still, everyone has had some achievement in their life that they are proud of, so don’t let this tough question throw you off guard in the interview.

Get help answering tougher interview questions with our article on the top nine tough interview questions and answers.

What is the Graduate Recruiter Really Asking?

Recruiters sometimes add the term “out of education” to this question, and even if they don’t, that’s often what they’re really looking for. They want to know more about you as a person – what makes you work and what motivates you – and whether there’s more to it than just academic qualifications. They also want to know what you consider “important” to see if you have a good attitude and if your values ​​will fit well with the organization.

How can I not answer the question

There are two common answers to this question that don’t impress recruiters:

• “I have 2.1.”

• “I passed my driving test.”

No matter how proud you are of these accomplishments, they don’t say anything exciting about you. When looking for a graduate job, a degree is unlikely to make you stand out from the crowd, and a driver’s license is a requirement for many jobs.

How should you answer the question “What is your most significant achievement?”

Avoid these clichéd answers and choose something that is specific to you. It should be a tangible event or achievement that you can define and measure – if you raised money for a charity, how much did you end up raising? It’s not good to give a vague answer such as “to become more confident when meeting new people” unless you can develop it. As with competency-based interviews, you should aim to use the STAR technique.

• Situation: give the interviewer context – describe the situation and why the achievement was significant. Why was it difficult to achieve?

• Task: What goal did you set out to achieve?

• Action: explain what your specific actions are to achieve your goal.

• Result: make sure this is a clear and specific event.

It must be something that is not easy; great answers show the recruiter how determined, dedicated or confident you need to be in the face of a challenge to succeed. You really need to show the benefits to the recruiter. Does your achievement show that you have great self-motivation and self-awareness and that you always achieve what you set out to do? Then make sure this occurs.

You can choose a professional achievement that is related to the role, such as exceeding sales goals at your part-time job, but you don’t have to. It’s more important that it’s an achievement you’re genuinely proud of – if you’re not passionate about it, it will come across to the interviewer.

If you’re still struggling to figure something out, consider whether you’ve done any of the following:

• Trained for and eventually completed a marathon or other sporting achievement.

• Create a new student society or turn a struggling one into something more successful.

• Overcome fear by completing something you’ve been afraid of.

• I traveled alone even though I felt nervous.

• Gave a presentation at an event and overcame public speaking anxiety.

• Collected a certain amount of money for charity.

• Helped others succeed – for example by teaching them a new skill.

This is also your opportunity to talk about something you haven’t been able to discuss in your interview so far. You can prepare several significant achievements to choose from for the day so that you can pick up additional skills and experience that have not yet been discussed at the interview. There’s also no reason not to mention more than one achievement or the fact that you have many other goals and achievements yet to come.