"I've been able to present cost-cutting suggestions many times to my previous employer. The one that I feel had the biggest impact was when I suggested additional warehouse staff. We had three various shifts and still averaged 100 hours of overtime per week. I suggested to my employer that we hire one more warehouse employee for each shift and keep hours to 120 regular vs. 100 hours of overtime pay, which was time and a half. This recommendation saved the company 31,000 per year. They implemented this change across 15 warehouses the following year, amounting to nearly half a million dollars in savings per year."

This is a very straightforward answer that can be successfully answered by anyone who has had any job in any field. Draw on personal experience of cutting costs whether it was at the fast food place where you worked during high school or cutting costs in your own budget to ensure timely bill payments.

If you have accounting experience with cutting costs, this is the perfect place to demonstrate that knowledge.

"When I worked as a Business Analyst for my last company, we were outsourcing auditing expertise to a company that was constantly trying to find ways for us to spend more money. When I realized we were spending a million dollars a year on a team that did minimal work apart from running a few queries and providing advice, I started educating myself on query management. I quickly proved to my manager through parallel testing that I could do the work and we could eliminate that expense for the company. We saved the company one million dollars a year by handling control and queries in house."