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Employees who possess drive and motivation have al- ways been
in high demand by employers. These two traits go hand-in-hand
with efficiency and productivity which, from the employer's
standpoint, are the primary objectives of an effective employee/employer relationship. As a consequence, you can almost bet
on the fact that some of the interview questions you encounter
during the course of your employment interview will be aimed
at measuring the extent of your drive and motivation.
Here are some examples of such interview questions:
- Give me some examples of your accomplishments that go well
beyond the absolute requirements of your current job.
- What basis do you use for measuring your own performance?
- What are you currently doing to improve your overall job
performance?
- How do you measure your personal success?
- What are some of your personal job-related goals? .What
are your three most important job objectives, and why are
they important?
- How does your current performance measure up to your personal
standards? What do you want to improve? What are you doing
to improve in these areas?
- Tell me about your process for setting goals and objectives.
What are the basic steps of this process? How do you choose
your objectives?
- How has your performance measured up to expectations? Did
you meet objectives? Exceed objectives? Greatly exceed objectives?
Fall short of objectives?
- How would you describe your work ethic and performance compared
with your functional peers?
- What are your long-term goals and objectives?
- What major changes and improvements do you want to bring
about within your function in the next year or two?
- What can you tell me about yourself that best illustrates
your personal drive and motivation?
- What do you believe are the three or four most important
principles needed to achieve job success?
- What do you believe are the common characteristics of highly
successful people?
The Classic Answers
This area is a little more difficult
to illustrate than some of the past topics. This is primarily
due to the difficulty of conveying the level or degree of
motivation in the context of the work being performed. Persons
not working in a particular field may have difficulty understanding
the significance of a particular accomplishment or goal
since they have no frame of reference and, for this reason,
may be unable to fully appreciate the level of energy and
motivation needed to attain these results.
Hopefully, however, the following representative examples
will give you some idea on how to approach the subject:
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1. "One accomplishment
that exceeded my basic job requirements was the reduction
of department operating costs by some 60 percent, far
more than was expected of me. Each department manager
was given a cost reduction goal of 25 percent to accomplish
by year end. We went considerably beyond that target through
some creative, major reengineering and work redesign along
with automation of several of our work processes. Annual
savings to the business was about $0.25 million."
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2. "Some of my personal
job-related goals include reducing standing inventories
by at least 90 percent and working toward a just-in-time
delivery system with our raw materials suppliers. I estimate
annual savings to the business to be in the range of $3
million. We are hard at work on this one and expect to
have things pretty much in place within the next 3 months.
A second personal goal that I have is to work with Engineering
to automate the product packaging area. We are still hand-picking
cases in this area to get a mixed color assortment per
case. Preliminary investigation of automatic packaging
equipment that I have undertaken suggests that we could
reduce labor costs by nearly $0.75 million per year. We
just received capital authorization for this project,
but I expect to have this equipment in-place and fully
operational within six weeks."
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| 3. "One
of my key personal objectives is to complete a part-time
M.B.A. program over the next two years. I am already halfway
through. I feel this will provide me with a much broader
range of knowledge in other business areas such as marketing
and finance. I have a strong desire to learn more about
the overall operation of businesses and what is really important
to creating a successful enterprise. As apart of my learning,
I also try to read at least one business-related book a
month. I al- ways pick topics with which I am unfamiliar.
This forces me to keep expanding my intellectual horizons,
and serves to stretch my mind a bit.
If you talked with my
boss, she would confirm that I have exceeded all expectations
during the last two years. We jointly set some very aggressive
objectives for the year, all of which were met, with most
accomplished reasonably ahead of schedule. Additionally,
I undertook two other major projects beyond those to which
we had agreed, and I believe both will have been completed
before we reach year end."
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