When you interview for a job, your prospective boss wants to know that you have the skills and experience to make a contribution to the organization.  But she also wants to know that you’re not a clock-watcher.

Clock-watchers are people that expend just enough effort to keep their jobs, and that’s it.  They’re not interested in being challenged or working hard - they just want to earn a paycheck and go home.  And employers avoid these individuals like the plague, because they’d much rather hire someone who will do all he can to make a valuable impact. 

Even if you’re not a clock-watcher, in interviews you have to be careful that you’re demonstrating motivation and enthusiasm about your industry and the prospective job.  Interviewers are bound to ask questions that get to the heart of whether a candidate has what it takes to stay with the company through the long haul.  Here are a few examples:

• Do you consider yourself successful?  If so, what professional behaviors do you think contribute to your success?  In answering this, you want to illustrate how you are self-motivated, organized, ambitious, and persistent.  
• What work accomplishment are you most proud of?  Employers are looking for you to show a commitment to achievement, so brainstorm the answer to this one in advance.  Think of a previous work task that you were genuinely excited about, and practice communicating about it with passion.  
• When you’re assigned a project, how do you go about executing it?  You’ll want to show that you are goal-oriented, that you know how to plan and organize tasks systematically.  Demonstrate that you know how to set a deadline and key milestones along the way.  
• Tell me about a time when one of your projects failed, or experienced a setback.  No one is perfect, and the interviewer isn’t looking for you to say that you are. Instead, he wants to hear that you didn’t give up, that you dusted yourself off and took corrective measures to get the job done. 

Remember that interviewers use past success as an indication of future success, so prove to them why your track record mandates that they take a chance on you.