Hi there. I'm always a bit stumped by the question of 'tell us about an achievement of importance to you' - I never quite know what they are looking for. Is it the impressiveness of the accolade or what you value as an achievement?? A mixture? Something else?
Does anyone have any examples they wouldn't mind sharing so I can get more of an idea, please?
It’s more of the latter than the former. One person’s accolade could be the next person’s walk in the park.
I always use this real life example to explain what recruiters are looking for. It was asked at interview stage rather than on an application, but the logic still applies:
I interviewed one candidate in the morning who I asked the question of what their greatest achievement was. They talked about running the London Marathon, which to someone like me was a massive achievement because I can’t even run for the bus. When I asked them to explain why it was the greatest achievement they spoke about how they had been a long distance runner for sometime and when probed further they actually made it sound quite easy. They hadn’t actually changed a lot of the things that in their life to achieve the goal – they loved running, they trained a lot anyway, they ate healthily, and running was just part of the every day life.
I interviewed another candidate that same afternoon and asked them the same question. They seemed slightly reluctant to tell me the answer because they didn’t think it was that good but I asked them to give the example anyway and said that if I didn’t think it was suitable I would ask them the question again. They spoke about running a 5K run. Now on the face of it I would say this is nothing compared to 26.2 miles. However they hated running, they never went to the gym, they were fairly unhealthy and their lifestyle meant that they weren’t physically fit . So they had to change everything in their day-to-day life just to accomplish the run. Their achievement was actually really raising money for charity – the reason they chose the 5K run was that they knew that everyone thought it was quite funny that they of all people would do a charity run and so they actually raised a lot of sponsorship from it because it was something so outside of their comfort zone, and people knew that so they sponsored them.
Ultimately the person in the afternoon had the better of the two answers. I don’t doubt that running a marathon is hard work but the individual didn’t really sell the accomplishment behind it. It was almost like the title of the achievement was enough to them, but they literally made it sound pretty easy/straight forward.
So what recruiters are looking for are not really the accomplishment but the effort behind it. This could be anything from determination or drive to achieve something which for you is out of the ordinary.
Alternatively it could just be doing something to an excellent standard. So for instance if the marathon runner had told me that they had reduced their running time down by a certain amount for the marathon or accomplished at a certain time that was impressive, that might have heightened the answer.
So think about combining any of the following factors that sit behind the achievement rather than the achievement itself:
- dedication (time/effort/energy)
- determination
- setting high standards/achieving excellence
- going outside of your comfort zone
- achieving something that benefits others and not just yourself (eg the 5k runner was raising money for charity - something the London Marathon runner never even mentioned)
