Tricky Interview Questions - What are your personal achievements or accomplishments?

“Answer this for me, if you can” said Mr Sumesh. (The manager interviewing me from a very well-known company)

“What are your personal achievements in life?”

Wow! – I thought.

Totally spaced out moment. 

What am I good at? (See this was one of those wrong interpretations of the question, that led to the following answer) - "I’m good at acting" - I babbled, but he was quick to correct me, that it was just a strength and not an achievement.

Think think think! (Stupid head wants to get blank now, the perfect meditation mind is always available while you’re at an interview. So much for “inner peace”!)

What on earth have I achieved personally in life?

Anything to do with saving a dog or charity?

Nah . . . that can’t be it.

So then nothing at all. Oh my god!

What have I done?

From the corner of my thinking eyes, I can see the managers smiling Face! (Creepy!!!)

And then it just happened…out of nowhere. . . I had just framed a sentence in my head. (Yeah baby, 

I’m rocking side by side, just like Joey’s style: D)

Not even sure if I could win this man’s attention with the exceptional answer that I was about to deliver.

And slowly, in fact a little dramatically, I began -

“The fact that I completed my engineering (which trust me, it was not an easy task for me) and to have then pursued MBA, completed that as well with some really good scores, I think, that has been the proudest moment of my life, an achievement indeed” – and just like that, I had discovered what my personal achievement was. (Ka-ching!)

Voila!

He had a smile on his face . . . I had done it, he saw me through the answer, I knew he believed what I said and was happy that he had got an answer.(Of course there was a little more to this answer, which I'd rather skip out from here, but mission accomplished)

Not sure if it won any brownie points . . . oh who am I kidding?

It actually did win me enough brownies to get me to the next round of interviews.

Ting!!! (3) - That’s the happy gong tune in my head ;)

And everything else was history. The important thing was, I had never realized what I had achieved in my life so far. I’m still clueless if academics can be counted under personal achievements. But let’s face it, not all are born geniuses, and I for sure had a lot of helping hands and then some, to achieve what I have achieved.

No idea if you would count this as a personal achievement, but like my friend Sindhu who chants this mantra all the time – “To each their own” ;) I would like to rest my case with it, as well.(At least until I figure out something else.)

If you’ve got something to add, feel free to leave a comment. I’ll be happy to hear from you.