I’m going to have to learn how to quote multiple people in one post, and snip out the bits I’m not addressing, or this will be ridiculous.
Voyager, I thought it was easy. Once you have accomplished that objective, you are done. That’s what I told him, he still wants to know how you know. Please don’t use this question if you interview people. Or at least evaluate their first answer and move on. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was thinking right along with Candyman.
To some of you, Oh, funny, funny, funny! Thank you for making me laugh. I needed it. I didn’t get the job.
To the others, umm, it was a job at a dollar store. Can’t be that complicated, really.
The little button with ["+], next to the
[quote]
button, is the secret to this. Hit the ["+] for each post you’re quoting, and then also the
[quote]
for the last one.
Since you’re talking about a job at A Dollar Store they may have been looking for a response like: “I know I’m done after I tell my supervisor I’m done, and he doesn’t ask me to anything else”. Possibly “I know I’m done after I’ve double checked everything”. Probably it’s some stupid person’s idea of an intelligent question.
THANK YOU, GARY T !
Yes, he would have been my boss. I’m at the point I need to bite the bullet, and take any job offered. If I don’t get a job in the next month or three, I’m afraid my boyfriend will make me sleep in the RV out in the yard! 
That, or I’ll have to sell it.
I assumed he meant a specific thing, not “Is there anything else I can do?”
Thank goodness! I thought it was Chief of Staff for one of the Republican Presidential candidates. 
You prolly oughta sell it, honey. Or come down here and I’ll support you. 
My first reaction is “I’m probably never done; I’ll always be making sure it’s still doing what I want it to do, until the day comes I stop worrying about it as I can see it does just fine without me”
Today was my last day at work <yay layoffs!> and even though the day was strictly about paperwork, I still couldn’t resist making sure the person taking over knew various things about the desk that had changed recently, etc. Spent most of the day answering her questions, really.
I’d be a terrible project manager, apparantly. I’d always be wondering how it was going, even after I handed it off to the next phase!
That has to be the stupidest job interview question I’ve ever heard. And that’s saying a lot.
This is a good question as it reveals the ability of the candidate to think on his feet. That being said, I wouldn’t judge him too harshly if he didn’t give the answer I’m hoping for (unless he gave one of those smart-ass answers like “when the 5 o’clock whistle blows”. That joker would be outta there toot-sweet).
I agree with others that measuring output against initial objectives/goals plus customer feedback is the answer. But in some cases, you’re never done. Some jobs are continuous improvement cycles.
Well you never know. I think needscoffee has this pegged right.
"When you set out to do something, how do you know when you’re done?”
“When it no longer needs doing, when it’s completed”
“But I mean when do you KNOW that you’ve reached that point, that you’re done?”
“Let me give you an example. Answering this question that you have posed, about how I know when a task is done, OK? Well: We are done here. Take my word for that. Let’s move on now, shall we?”
It’s OK to think that, but then you might not be the best candidate for certain kinds of jobs. But for a job at a dollar store? Hardly. The interviewer probably saw the question on some job interview site and felt pleased with himself for asking it during the interview.
Thanks, we’ll be in touch. 
I disagree. I think it’s a pretty good question and I’m glad that I read this thread, because I don’t think I would have answered it very well before reading the replies here.
I also think it was fair that the OP requested an example of a goal, and I think that ducking that request was an unfair move by the interviewer. In fact, I think the completely correct answer to this question is “It depends on the goal.” Which is pretty much a more assertive way of asking for an example.
If my goal is to have fifty thousand US dollars in my bank account by the end of the year, there’s really not much to discuss. Come midnight on December 31, my success or failure is pretty self-evident. If my goal is to create a spreadsheet to record current inventory throughput and analyze historical sales data with the objective of forecasting future purchasing requirements, well? I’m in the wrong interview, aren’t I?
It is a bit highbrow for a retail position at the Dollar Store. That much, I think we can all agree on.
You can also hit the [post reply] at the end, if you don’t want to quote the last entry.
Yeah. I can’t imagine much at a dollar store that would be a judgement call. Except maybe deciding when it’s time to refer a complaining customer to the boss because they’re just not hearing it from you.
For our projects, the job is over when the paperwork is done, including recording the notice of completion with the county, acceptances of final reports to the funding agencies, final payments to contractors, closing accounts and purchase orders, holding an internal “lessons learned” meeting, assembling the project files into properly labeled binders, and storing them with an order to maintain them in archive for at least 5 (or 7 or 10) years. If you forget to include an electronic version of the as-built drawings, you will be cursed decades later by those who come after you. Oh, I forgot that they’ve added a closure memo for the big bosses.
So I can see asking if you know how to close out a project, in some cases. But “how do you know when you’re done?” just sounds odd. Maybe the answer is “I get a warm glow, starting right in my solar plexus. Although beans will sometimes give me a false positive.”
- nm -
The problem you’re encountering is people who don’t know what it is they’re trying to do. They’ve confused the process with the goal. Studying the material isn’t the goal. Passing the test is the goal. Studying the material is a means towards achieving that goal. But if they find that studying isn’t helping them pass the test, then they need to rethink what they’re doing.
It is an odd question, but it’s not the same question as “how do you close a project?” The question is, how do you know when to close a project? It’s not a bad question. It’s impossible to answer without knowing the details of the project, which is why I said that ducking out of providing an example was poor form by the interviewer. I maintain that it’s a good question, but that the interviewer failed when they told the OP it could be anything.
“It’s done when it’s done” isn’t a good enough answer, but refusing to give an example when asked is a case of poor interviewing. It was a case of refusing to acknowledge that sometimes the answer to a question must be a question. For some questions, the correct answer is always a question or a statement that demands a more accurate question, which again, is pretty much a more assertive way of questioning.
Honestly, my hunch is that this is an example of management training; half-understood and poorly executed by a hiring manager. Someone copying down good interview questions during an 8 hour seminar without learning why they should be asked or what they could learn from them.
When I’m tired, or it gets too hard, I know I’m done.
I was about to say something about measurable objectives - but a job at a dollar store? Just as likely the answer he was looking for was when he said it was done.
I’m beginning to think you are a lot smarter than this guy.
That’s not so easy. I was on a committee once developing a process to figure out when to give more money to a project and when to stop it. We had a problem in that our internal customers gave us money for researchy projects, and if they clearly were not going to work it was very, very hard for managers to admit it and give the money back - even when the scientists working on it told them there was no hope. Someone managed to use our process to kill a zombie project, which made us feel really good.