What are your biggest achievements till date

What Is Your Biggest Achievement? | Important Interview Questions

What is your biggest achievement or accomplishment to date? No, winning a prize for an inter-school football tournament or participating in some event is not enough. Think of something that will help you from a career perspective.

An interviewer may ask for just one achievement or a handful – so give this question some thought beforehand. Wherever possible, keep most of your achievements work-related and focus on the benefits that you achieved for other people:

  • Increased customer or client satisfaction.
  • Greater revenues or profit.
  • A bigger slice of market share.
  • The elimination of inefficiencies or errors.
  • Cost reduction.
  • Improved relationship morale within the team or with other stakeholders.
  • Enhanced reputation of your employer.

For example, an IT manager may say, “We were asked by our head office in the US to upgrade all of our staff’s computers to a new software package. We have over 600 computers across three locations in the UK and it was imperative that we handled the migration within the space of a few days to ensure that there would be no compatibility issues.

This was back in March, which is traditionally a really busy time of year for our company. I had to attend a lot of meetings with senior managers to persuade them that it was important. And I had to coordinate the efforts of my team to ensure that all of the computers were upgraded within those few days.

It took a lot of planning and hard work, but I was really proud of the fact that we managed the migration and had only a few minor problems –
and no complaints from the staff.”

Don’t just talk about “what is your biggest achievement” or “what are your greatest accomplishments”– you also need to say why it was an achievement. Clearly demonstrate to the interviewer exactly what you did to make your action an achievement.

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If an interviewer asks you specifically to talk about an achievement outside of work, always relate it back to the kinds of skills or characteristics that would make you a good addition to the team. And don’t just assume that the link is obvious – explain the link to the interviewer.

For example, passing a piano exam is evidence of your ability to focus on achieving the goals that you set for yourself. Perhaps a sporting triumph is evidence of your commitment and dedication to improving your health. Or raising money for a charity is evidence of your ability to work with a team to a deadline.

Possible Answer #1:

“Becoming the Champion with 4 first prizes at the 25th Zonal Sports Meet is my biggest achievement to date.”

Possible Answer #2:

“To date, I have accomplished several goals and milestones in my career as an app developer. The one that rings a bell is the latest version update on a core product of my current organization for customer profiling and payments. We had been slogging on this version update for 12 months at a stretch and I was a core team member.

My team made me their team lead during the last 6 months and at that time, we were working on the mobile components of the product. To meet the deadline, I brought in 5 more resources, who had expertise in certain technologies, which were crucial for the pending modules.

After the deployment of each of the components, all of us cross-trained to support all the platforms proficiently. In the end, we were able to deliver the project within time and budget constraints.

Our CEO was highly impressed and all of us were also awarded at the quarterly town hall in December. Would you like to take a look at the Android version of our product?”

Also Read: 13 Positive Habits That Can Boost Your Success

“What is your biggest achievement till date” may be paraphrased as “what are your greatest achievements” or “what are your greatest accomplishments”.

What if you were asked, “what is your biggest achievement?” Are you aware of other important interview questions? Do comment.

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