Page 25 - How To Answer Interview Questions (II)

Job Interview Question 7

Describe a time you reduced costs or improved efficiency

Every single one of our jobs is tied to money. Companies are in business to make money, and every
cog in the machine needs to work smoothly together toward that goal. If you don't make more money
than you cost, you won't hold your job very long.

So, there must be a time when you reduced costs or improved efficiency in any job you’ve done,
and you need to pinpoint what it is and quantify it. (Quantifying it means to identify the numbers that
describe the savings—you saved 3 hours, you saved $300, you improved it by 30%, etc.)

Here’s an example of a gentleman with a great answer to this:
He was working on a machine, with gold wires. In his process, excess gold was actually falling on
the floor—very tiny pieces, as scrap. He went to his supervisor and said, "Look, we should not be
throwing away these scraps. We should be figuring out a way to get that gold out of those shavings
and recycle it for our sales or for something else.

The supervisor thought that was a great idea, so they actually started keeping those
shavings and trying how to figure out a way to separate the gold from the other material—and they
did. The company rewarded him with a sizable bonus.

This is a great story because it proved that he is someone who takes initiative, thinks in a bigger-
picture way about the company, and can bring solutions above and beyond what his job requires—
but what makes it better is quantifying it. How would he do that?

He would know how much those gold reels cost: $200, $1000, $100,000, $200,000, or whatever it