Have you every been involved in cost reduction efforts during your HR career? What was the effort and how did you effectively handle it with success?

When organizations look to reduce costs to help their bottom line, the Human Resources team is often part of that process. Whether it is in labor costs or other expenses, your interviewer is ideally looking to hear that you know how cost reduction could impact your work with their organization. If you have direct experience in cost savings initiatives within the HR field, be sure to talk in detail about that experience, what you learned and why the effort was necessary. If you don't have direct experience with cost-saving initiatives, there is no need to fret. Just be able to talk about ways that a Human Resources team can help reduce costs for an organization.

"Yes, I have been involved in many throughout my career. Most recently, the pandemic's impact on my current company was huge and some drastic efforts needed to be taken to survive. First, we implemented a hiring freeze that took effect for over three months. Once production began ramping up again, we took a very calculated approach to evaluate what critical positions we needed to recruit now and which ones could wait until further out. I worked very closely with our senior leadership team in a committee-style approach to making these decisions. Without these efforts, it would have been challenging for the organization to survive in such a drastic downturn."