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."