Give me an example of a goal you’ve set and how you achieved it.

You'd love to give it your all in a job interview, but you're concerned you may be asked tricky interview questions.

Questions like this are designed to gauge how quickly applicants can think on their feet and how well they keep themselves motivated.

Below are our best STAR interview answers to this example of a goal that we've set and how we achieved it.

The goal was to get them to buy again

S - In my previous job as a junior salesperson, I was tasked with contacting customers who had not purchased a product for more than three months.

T - The goal was to get them to buy again, but we found that many of these customers had moved away from the area and could not be reached by phone.

A - I decided to try a different approach. I went through all of our records and compiled a list of all past customers who had moved within the last year. Then I sent each of them an email offering them 15% off their next purchase if they returned their old product within two weeks.

R - The response rate on this campaign was nearly double what we had expected, and it resulted in our best quarter ever for sales!

Increasing  sales by at least 20%

S - At my last job, I was working as the personal assistant to a senior executive. The company had just launched a new product line and it wanted to increase its sales by at least 20%.

T - My role was to develop an action plan that would help achieve this goal. I would have to find out what steps needed to be taken in order for us to reach our target and then write them down in an action plan.

A - First, I went through all of the documents related to the launch of this new product line and analyzed them carefully. This helped me understand what steps were already being taken and which ones could be improved upon or added.

R -After analyzing all of these documents, I came up with an action plan that we followed closely over the next few months and it led us to achieve our target easily!

Finding a new CRM system

S - I was working for a small startup company that had, up until that point, been doing everything on its own. They were running out of money and needed to find a way to make more sales. The owner had previously worked as an analyst at an investment bank and knew that there were some things he could do better if he had access to the right tools.

T - I was tasked with finding a new CRM system that would allow us to track our leads better, keep track of our sales pipeline, and manage our customer relationships more effectively.

A - I decided it would be best to try out several different systems before we committed to one in order to get a feel for which one worked best for us and what features they offered at different price points. After testing five different systems over the course of two months, we decided on [CRM system].

R - It was the most affordable option but still allowed us access to all of the data we needed from within one platform without having to switch between multiple systems.

Speak more than one language fluently

S - I had a goal to be able to speak more than one language fluently.

T - To achieve this goal, I started by learning French. I started by taking classes at my local community college in college and then, later on, I took some online courses as well. I also watched a lot of French movies and TV shows, which helped me learn the language better.

A - After about two years of learning French, I could finally communicate in French with people who didn't speak English very well, as well as read books written in French. After achieving this goal, my next goal was to learn Spanish. Because it was so similar to French (and because I already knew how to speak some Spanish), it wasn't too difficult for me to pick up new words and phrases quickly.

R - Now that I've learned both languages, one of my goals is to be able to get around easily when traveling abroad without having to rely on Google Translate all the time!

Finding a more efficient way for our job

S - I was working as a team leader at a small startup. My team and I were in charge of creating new product descriptions for our new products, which we were going to launch on Amazon.

T - We were using our own website to do this, but it wasn't easy to use. We wanted a more user-friendly way that would be more efficient for us to get our descriptions done quickly and easily, so we could move on with other things.

A - So I proposed that we use a new tool called [tool name]. It's like a WordPress plugin, but it lets you create your pages on a drag-and-drop platform that's really easy for anyone to use—even if they don't have much experience coding or creating websites. You can just connect up your product information and upload photos, then write all the text directly into the page itself. No need for extra steps or workarounds! It was perfect for what we needed.

R - My team agreed with me and we started using [tool name] right away. We had no issues setting it up or getting it integrated into our website; it was very straightforward and easy to use. And now we've been able to save tons of time by being able to write all our pages directly into.

Create the company's first website and make it look professional

S - I was working in a small company that had just started an online store and needed to create a landing page.

T - Create the company's first website and make it look professional.

A - I used Google Analytics to learn more about what people are looking for when they're searching for products like ours, and then built out a site that made it easy for them to find what they were looking for.

R - The site had a conversion rate of 50%, which is higher than most sites in our industry, so we were able to get more sales from the same amount of traffic!

Creating a new product

S - I was working at a small software company in the Bay Area, and we were tasked with creating a new product that would help people find the best deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars. The product was meant to be used by people who travel frequently but don't want to spend hours searching through hundreds of websites trying to find the best deals.

T - My role was to work with our team of developers to create a prototype for our product. We had just gotten funding from investors, so we needed to show them that we had an idea worth investing in.

A - First, I worked with the developers to create mockups for what the app would look like and how users would interact with it. Then I worked with marketing to create a video demo that showed how easy it would be for customers to use our app. Finally, I wrote up some descriptions of how our app could help customers save money when traveling and added them along with screenshots from our mockup into an email which we sent out as part of our pitch deck presentation package.

R - The investors liked what they saw so much that they doubled their investment!