One of the top recruitment experts states that one of the best all time interview questions is “Tell me about your greatest career accomplishment”.

I have used this question many times when interviewing my candidates and am amazed at how many people are not ready with a story.  Maybe it’s just because I am in the recruitment industry and know that behavioral interviewing is how many (trained) hiring managers conduct their interviews these days – that I expect that job seekers would be ready for this question!?

When I designed our interview preparation web site www.wintheview.com, I added in a section where candidates could follow a template and easily create their accomplishment stories based upon a common format known as STAR.  It stands for first stating the SITUATION, then the TASK, then the ACTION taken and finally the RESULT which is the benefit derived from the action taken. 

Every person in the job market should be ready with at least 3 accomplishment stories that illustrate how they overcame a major obstacle, in a creative way to help the company to: cut costs, be more efficient, get more business, gain a competitive edge, get product to market more quickly or some other specific result that was achieved as a result of their proactive action.

We are in the process of making the “accomplishment story” tool more flexible with better formatting on the www.wintheview.com site.  Currently, users can create accomplishment stories with the help of a template which is automatically saved and printable for use in interview preparation and as a ”leave behind”  for interviews.  The real power is putting your stories in writing so they are INTERNALIZED and come out naturally when you are in a networking discussion or interviewing for the job of your dreams.

Bottom line is to spend the time necessary to prepare and practice what you will say in that all important interview.  www.wintheview.com will provide the roadmap to get you where you need to be!