What motivates you?
The interviewer is looking for insight into why and how you are motivated to achieve workplace goals and succeed at the job. They are also seeking to discover whether the factors that motivate you align with Amazon's goals and the role in which you would be working. This question can help interviewers narrow their pool down to the individual who is the best fit for the position, the marketing team, and the organization.
Most people are motivated by many factors, including pay, prestige, making a difference, seeing results, and interacting with interesting people. Providing insight into what motivates you at work can be a window into your personality and work style, thereby helping your interviewers understand you as a person and a potential employee. Take some time to prepare for this type of question; it can be difficult to think of a good answer for this question on the spot since it requires a bit of self-reflection.
"I have always been motivated by the desire to meet a tight deadline. Setting and reaching deadlines gives me such a sense of accomplishment. I love being challenged and enjoy creating an organized schedule for completing tasks and achieving my goals on time. For example, when I ran a marketing event last year, I set multiple deadlines for a variety of tasks leading up to the event. Achieving each milestone motivated me to keep working and helped me to ensure that the event ran smoothly."
"I'm driven by results. I like having a concrete goal to meet and enough time to figure out a strong strategy for accomplishing it. At my last job, our yearly goals were very aggressive, but I worked with my manager and the rest of my team to figure out a month-by-month strategy for meeting the year-end numbers. It was a real thrill to accomplish that."
Community answers are written by other candidates practicing this set. Reading how others frame the same question is one of the fastest ways to sharpen your own.
Anonymous Answer
"I'm driven by results and I do everything I can to see them. I like having a concrete goal to meet and enough time to figure out a strong strategy for accomplishing it. At my last job, our semester goals were very aggressive, but I worked with my manager and the rest of my team to figure out a month-by-month strategy for meeting the year-end numbers. It was a real thrill to accomplish that, by working together."
Marcie's Feedback
The interviewer will love that you're motivated by reaching your goals, and it's great that you have included an example here to support that claim. What were the semester goals at your last company? What did your month-by-month strategy entail? The more details you can provide, the better!
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