Interview Questions Part 2:Discussing Job Experience

Featured Questions:

What is your greatest achievement? What is your biggest failure? What major challenges and problems did you

face? How did you handle them? Share a conflict resolution

Share a project from start to finish.

What is your greatest achievement?

The best way to respond is to give an example of something you accomplished that

is directly related to the job you are interviewing for. Use the best example to show how what you accomplished will be

beneficial to the company you are interviewing with.

Greatest achievement:

Take a look at this video to see an example of a good answer to the question.

“What is your greatest achievement?”

“I am most proud of the fact that I graduated on time while playing varsity basketball for four years. Many of the women let their grades slip or took a lighter load and I didn’t want to do that. And I think that I got through it because of my determination. I didn’t even let myself visualize not turning things in on time or getting the bad grades or anything like that. I think that that positive attitude really carried me through and will carry me through here as well, to do many great things for this company.”

What is your biggest failure?

If you didn't fail at anything, say so. If you can think of an example, be sure that it's a minor one and turn it into a positive. For example, if

you were working on a project that was behind deadline, explain to the interviewer

how you adjusted the workload and the timeline to get back on track and ahead of

schedule.

What is your biggest failure?

Take a look at this video to see an example of a good answer to the question.

“My biggest failure came with Forest Products. I had lost a two-million-dollar account after being there only six weeks and I felt awful. I thought I was going to lose my job but luckily that didn’t happen because I was very determined to get that account back. And what I did was I researched what went wrong, addressed that with the client and within six months, I got him back. I even grew it to be a bigger account and right now, it makes up a third of the company’s business. So, I feel like I definitely learned my lesson and I won’t be making that mistake again.”

What major challenges and problems did you face? How did you handle them?

Be sure to include specific examples of how you handled a particular difficult situation. Discuss how you researched the issue and contributed to finding a solution.

Examples of good responses include:

During a difficult financial period, I was able to satisfactorily negotiate repayment schedules with multiple vendors.

When the software development of our new product stalled, I coordinated the team which managed to get the schedule back on track. We were able to successfully troubleshoot the issues and solve the problems, within a very short period of time.

A long-term client was about to take their business to a competitor. I met with the customer and was able to change how we handled the account on a day-to-day basis, in order to keep the business.

Share a conflict resolution:

Take a look of an example of a good answer to the question.

“Tell me about a recent conflict that you’ve encountered and how you’ve handled that.”

“OK. A couple of months ago, when we were preparing our year-end financial statement, my boss came to me. We had a large sales transaction set to happen in July and he asked me to report it in June. And I told him that predeeding a transaction wasn’t acceptable under the gap. He totally wasn’t happy. I had to explain to him that his request was fraudulent and unethical and that I knew he took his information to the bank and you know, the things that could happen to his company. The bank could come after him, civilly and even with criminal penalties. He kind of understood that and agreed that we shouldn’t do it.”

Share a project from start to finish. “Tell me about a project you took from start to launch.”

“I had just landed an account that was looking to promote a new product they had. It was a children’s product and the marketing was in a go-towards-mothers. After meeting with them and getting a feel for who they are and the type of branding that they wanted, we decided to kind of forego a pioneering style of adding new cause-marketing. So, we picked the charity out of the local area. I met with them and decided how we could effectively partner together and I took those ideas back to the client and got the go-ahead from them. So, as the project lead, I developed a three-phase plan to roll out this new product. And the first one was to actually have a product launch event with the charity there. And, all the proceeds from the event went to the charity at the end of the day. Phase two was to have ads in three local publications that kind of stated our involvement with the charity and extended the date; from which percentage of the proceeds would go to that charity, from buying the product. Then, phase three was to expand the marketing originale a little bit. So, I picked four similar markets around the state and did cause-marketing in those areas as well. Again, highlighting our involvement with the charity. By the end of this second phase, actually, we were so excited because a lot of the local stores had sold out the product already. So, it was very successful. The charity got some well-deserved purpose … So, I was happy about that.”