"Recently, I worked with a young lady that was struggling with alcohol dependency after she was released from a rehab center. To help keep her motivated in her battle to beat the addiction, I started by working closely with her rehab team to find out all that I could about her. Then, in our initial meeting, I took the time to learn about the woman and her family. Knowing that chemical dependency is best beaten with internal motivation, we based her goals on staying sober for her children and helping her be a better mother to them. In the months that I've been working with her, she has stayed clean and has become a better mother in her own words. In group settings, I have to keep goal setting at a much higher and generic level because I don't often get to know the internal motivations of each individual. In these settings, I like to talk about the fact that people need to find their own motivation and show them how to do this by breaking their motivations down to pain and pleasure. In the end, personal motivation comes down to replacing pain with pleasure."

Give the interviewer a step-by-step approach to how you help each client or patient set goals. Give an example to make it more concrete. Your interviewer wants to hear that you take each person individually based on many factors in their personal life. It doesn't hurt to talk about goal setting in a group setting as well.

"I had a client who was struggling with an eating disorder. We set small goals to help her take better control over it. Then, we looked at the bigger picture of her life and found opportunities to take control, like her job and living situation. Finally, we worked with a Psychologist for an added support system. By learning a little bit about her and her personal life, I was able to help her set attainable and meaningful goals on her road to recovery."