How do you define success?
What does success look like to you? Is it a job title? A fancy car and a mortgage? Is it finally getting to that leadership role?
Welcome back to our series, "How to Answer Anything" where we provide methods to answer the most challenging and common interview questions you're guaranteed to come across in most interviews.
One of those questions might be, "How do you define success?" or "How do you evaluate success?" Regardless of how the question is posed, this open-ended question can cause even the most seasoned interviewees to sweat. Should you be honest that it's all about money and fame? Is this a trick question with a "right" answer? Or what about how your body language just went crazy?!
We know this question can bring out all the emotions. That's why we're here to help.
Table of Contents
- What Does Success Mean to You?
- Why Interviewers Ask This Question
- How to Prepare for This Question
- Common Mistakes Interviewees Make When Answering this Interview Question
- How to Answer "How Do You Define Success?"
- Example Answers for How to Answer, "How Do You Define Success?"
What is the Meaning of Success to You?
We hate to be totally obvious here, but it's going to be challenging to answer this question if you've never considered what success means to you.
For some people, success represents money. For others, success means happiness. And while your personal definition of success will vary, a simple way to reframe this question is by considering a desirable outcome. This outcome could be related to a work project, goal, task, etc.
In order to determine your personal meaning of success, consider your desired outcomes in the context of work. Here are some examples:
- Feeling fulfilled
- Doing meaningful work
- Having a purpose
- Being valued and appreciated
- Being recognized for your contribution
- Continually growing
- Making an impact at work, in your community, with your team, etc.
- Maintaining good health
- Achieving financial stability
- Having work-life balance
Why Interviewers Ask This Question
How you define success in a job interview can tell your interviewers a lot about your values and work ethic, your personality, and what it might be like to work with you. They'll learn things like what drives you to do great work and what you're motivated by. Another reason they might ask is that they want to work with someone who shares a similar vision or value as them.
These open-ended questions cover a lot of interview ground, especially when considering if the company culture is a match for you. This means your priority should be to illustrate that you are the type of employee who sets and meets your goals.
Think of it this way. If you remove the personal part of this question, success means something that turns out well—and that's what the interviewer is really asking. They want to know if you can do things that turn out well. If you can share that with a hiring manager, you'll stand out.
How to Prepare for This Question
Coming up with your own personal definition of success is hard because it's personal and probably changes with each life stage. There's no one-size-fits-all answer for what a successful person looks like, and your idea of success will always be unique to you.
This is all totally normal, but for the purposes of a job interview, you'll want to narrow the scope of how you think about this question.
To help you prepare, make a shortlist of your recent accomplishments or times when you completed what you set out to do. Consider your aspirations, milestones, metrics, and times when you had a positive impact on people's lives.
Here are some examples:
- Did you reach a sales quota?
- Did you launch a new employee resource group after it was a company goal for months?
- Did you recently start saying "no" to clients, which allowed you to focus on launching a new product for your company?
- Did you try something new at work? If it failed, did you learn something for the future?
Give some time to think about your recent successes at work, and we'll use those in the next section.
Common Mistakes Interviewees Make When Answering This Interview Question
We love a good dos and don'ts list—especially regarding interviewing tips. That's because it can be just as helpful to know what NOT to say as what you should say. Here are some common mistakes to avoid when answering what success means to you in a job interview:
- Don't share overly personal information about your family or yourself
- Don't share your political or religious beliefs
- Don't forget to keep the context of your interview professional
- Don't use someone else's definition of success
- Don't forget to humanize your response—they don't want to hire a perfect person or robot!
How to Answer "How Do You Define Success?"
Success is tricky. And like we mentioned already, defining success is deeply personal and yet we become so distracted by the success of others that we forget what success truly means to us—as individuals and as employees.
If you're familiar with this series, you know what comes next. We have developed a three-step method for defining and communicating what success looks like to you when framed in a job interview.
1. Evaluate your past successes
When preparing for a job interview, you should be running a list of your past successes (and failures), your biggest strengths (and weaknesses), and what long-term goals you have in mind. The good news? You can apply many of these learnings to answer this question.
Before determining what your future success could look like, take a walk down memory lane. What have your past wins and successes looked like? Did you overcome huge challenges to meet them? Did you learn new things about yourself in the process? By taking stock of your feel-good successes in the past, you can illustrate a path to future success when speaking to the hiring manager at your potential employer.
Example: Success, to me, is in learning and growing in a role. At my last position as [JOB TITLE], I was given a very ambitious project that I accepted, although it required a huge learning curve. I was able to learn and grow in tandem with completing [PROJECT] and achieving [RESULT]. Success, to me, is an upward trajectory in skill coupled with an openness to learning.
Specific Examples of Achievements to List
- Organized schedule or logistics for the executive team
- Communicate or collaborate with other departments
- Re-organized something to make it work better
- Onboarded new team members
- Trained new employees
- Identified a problem and solved it
- Come up with a new idea that improved things
- Developed or implemented new procedures or systems
- Worked on special projects
- Improved operational efficiency
- Received awards
- Been complimented by your supervisor or co-workers
- Increased revenue or sales for the company
- Increased new customers
- Retained or increased repeat clients
- Managed data
- Established new partnerships
- Launched marketing initiatives
- Maintained marketing ROI and ad spend
- Saved money for the company
- Managed budget for the company
- Helped the company stay within budget
- Created financial reports for the company
- Saved time for the company
- Contributed to good customer service
2. Determine what the organization's view of success looks like
When an interviewer asks the question, "What does success look like to you?" they are looking for a number of elements in your answer—but they are looking for one thing in particular: a company fit.
If your goals are to skyrocket to the top of the C-level and take down anyone in your way, hold on a minute.
Before you answer this question, make sure your goals are aligned with the company's mission statement, its people culture, and its core values. If their core values are in collaboration, mentorship, and community, make sure that your answer taps into those values. If the core values are revenue, revenue, and revenue, your answer might be slightly different.
Use your social media skills to seek out the company's mission and values. Pay attention to the adjectives they use in their outward-facing marketing materials. Pay very close attention to the job description for the job at hand. Volley those ideals back when answering this question.
Example:
I know that [COMPANY] has a huge emphasis on [VALUES]. Success, to me, is being able to work collaboratively with a team of experts to create solutions while retaining this core value, which is important to me.
3. Define what a successful career looks like for you—both in the short-term and long-term
This is the meat of the answer—and this is where you get the opportunity to share what success really looks like to you.
Close your eyes and think about your own definition of success. What does success look like three months from now? What about ten years?
Take your past experiences, consider the organization, and marry these things together. Success can be as broad as defining and achieving goals in the workplace. It can be exiting your comfort zone to take on something new or working with different people. Success can be working your way into a leadership position or working fluidly with a large team to achieve a specific goal.
If you're really brave, you could even describe success as learning and growing from past failures.
Example:
I define success as what happens when I combine [COMPANY VALUE] and grit to achieve a goal. I feel a project has been successful when I see real growth in my skills and abilities. At [COMPANY] I would consider my first success to be walking through the door as an employee. From there, I would build my success with my openness to learn and the opportunity to collaborate with great minds here at [COMPANY].
BONUS: Remember that success is a process
A big mistake we are all guilty of making is considering success to be one thing. The problem with that is that success is not a static thing. Success—and the vision of success—can change and morph into something else.
Repeat this mantra, "Success is not one thing. Success is a process."
Example Answers for How to Answer, "How Do You Define Success?"
Below is a general example:
"Success to me is defined in a variety of ways. When I'm at work, I strive to set challenging goals with my team and create realistic strategies for achieving them. I get a lot of personal and professional satisfaction from achieving my goals, and I know from some of my interviews with the sales team that you have some big quotas to hit this year. I also understand from some of my conversations that these big quotas rely on the whole team working together, which is something I would love to collaborate on and support."
And here are some role-specific sample answers:
If You're an Independent Contributor...
"Success to me is being able to focus on a few things and do them super well. For example, during Covid, my company lost a few big clients, so we needed to work quickly to either secure new clients or offer more to the clients we still had so they wouldn't cancel. Together with the product team and account management team, we built some new features that enabled them to work virtually with our original software. Not only did we keep all our remaining clients, but we were able to bring back all of the clients we lost in 2020 back in 2021. Instead of investing in marketing and sales, we invested in product development and that focus served us well."
If You're Entry-Level...
"Success for me is all about learning something new. At this early stage in my career, I value any opportunity to learn something new and develop new skills. In my current role as an editorial assistant, this means pitching new stories and volunteering to help the more senior reporters with their stories. By volunteering and being open to taking on a variety of assignments, I've expanded my bylines to include finance and health. Each time an article I helped with went viral, I felt successful. And each time I byline a new article, I get feedback that helps me hone my writing skills. All of this learning is what makes me feel successful."
If You're a Leader...
"As a leader, I define success by the health of my team. We can't reach performance goals unless our teams are taken care of first. In my current role, I have implemented company culture improvements that have improved employee retention by 10%. Additionally, our last employee survey showed that the majority of employees feel supported by their upper managers and I think that's a direct correlation to the investments I've made in leadership training. Employees who are supported are more engaged and they stay with a company longer. That's a success all day long for me."
