STAR interview answering framework is a simple, step-by-step, structured technique to help you answer competency or situational interview questions. Most recruiting managers advocate this method for hiring mid-senior or senior roles cutting across industries and domains. STAR is an acronym coded framework wherein,
It is a thinking technique best utilized in answering largely behavior-based questions. Its correct application helps a candidate communicate important points clearly, concisely, and completely so that the answer sounds genuine and achievable.
1. Situation
This denotes a real-life situation that you had confronted before or had seen some of your close associate encounters or something you needed to accomplish. Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You should clearly describe a specific event or situation to form the basis and not give a generalized description of your past actions. Make sure to provide enough details for the interviewer to understand your response. You can be given any situation from your previous job or from a volunteer or societal experience or any relevant event based on details from your resume. For example, ‘Suppose you are leading a cross-domain team in which few members are not performing as per your expectation. What will you do to improve it?’
2. Task
Here we describe the task that needed to be completed or the situation you were confronted with. Here your focus should be to briefly enumerate the goal you are working towards. For e.g. ‘What will be your approach to deliver a project whose deadline has been reduced to half by the upper management?’
3. Action
Here explain the rationale behind the actions you were suggesting as well as lay down your action plan. To drill down, you describe your actions to address the situation with optimum detail carving out your specific role in handling that situation. The interviewer wants to see your thought process and approach as a leader, not your role as a team player or a follower. For instance, an Interview wants answers to questions such as what specific steps did you take and what was your specific contribution? It is advisable to use the word “I,” not “we” when describing actions. For example, ‘The productivity of your team has reduced by 50% from last quarter. What will be your action plan?’ So, here a viable action plan would be to have a focus group discussion with the team to find root cause analysis, analyze each root cause with a subset of a team and take corrective actions accordingly, as well as make a learning note out of this situation for future.
4. Result
Here we describe the desired outcome of our proposed actions. This is usually the concluded statement. The interviewer is expecting to hear the outcome of your actions and the result coming out of them. Please don’t be shy about taking credit for your behavior, whether good or bad, and refrain from posting an all success hard-to-digest story. Your response should answer questions such as What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? Make sure your answer contains more of a positive connotation than negative or neutral. For example, ‘As a result, individual competency ramp-up plan and giving more decision-making freedom to team leads, the overall team productivity increased by 25% vis-a-vis last quarter.
If you are adopting the STAR method, then follow these four parts. You are advised to be as specific as possible without rambling, bragging, or including too much information. Please remember that the interviewer has budgeted his time for each interview, and he or she would be more pleased to hear pertinent points. Always talk about the result and refrain from using examples that do show you in a negative light. But for cases where the end result was not on expected lines (e.g., the top line of the company fell by more than 10%, team attrition rate did not fall, etc.), you must highlight your strengths and learning.
After covering the theoretical aspects of STAR methodology, let us come to some practical learning.
Let’s see how to construct a good answer to a competency-based question. The question is, “Tell us about a big change that you have faced in your career and how you dealt with it.” Flexibility and adaptability are two key competency traits that employers value the most, especially while hiring mid-senior to senior roles. To answer this question, the candidate can choose a career moment where he is promoted to handle a big team or a set of products. The candidate then has to enumerate his action list and changes he or she introduced in due course, the challenges he or she had to face, the innovations he has to do, and finally, the result that came about from his or her efforts. The candidate has to articulate how he or she adapted to the role and what changes he has to undergo in his approach to assess the interviewee’s adaptability.
An example response (split into all four steps) is given below:
Situation 🡪 “In my previous organization XXX, I was working as a technical architect and major lead on a portfolio of IPTV products and was reporting to the product head. But suddenly, my manager left the organization.”
Task 🡪 “And I was asked to take up his role and ramp up quickly. “
Actions 🡪 ” Initially, I felt very indifferent to the new role despite being offered to head the product as the new role would have very little scope for technical work. But after having a talk with my director, I approached my new role with an open mind and quickly made a succession plan for my current role as well as made a knowledge transfer plan with my manager. Slowly, I groomed another technical lead into a system architecture role for an IPTV-based product while I started acting as a mentor. On the higher up, I learned fine nuances of product management, stakeholder management, and the art of negotiations with clients from my outgoing manager. I always listened to his advice and also asked other product heads to mentor me for a brief time.”
Result🡪 “Slowly, in 3 months, I was ready for my new role and got good reviews from all external clients of my product line. This whole experience made me realize how important flexibility, adaptability, and agility are in the modern-day corporate world.”
While answering any question, it is better to fine-tune the answers as per the role you are being interviewed for. One should not sound like reading from a script, and the answer should sound more like coming on the fly. One major pitfall while answering a performance-related question is giving a fabricated answer that slowly drifts away from truth towards falsehood. For instance, while answering questions on your success story, saying “I did XXXX, which increased the company profitability by 50%” will be hard to digest since multiple factors decide profitability. In a nutshell, avoid too much invention while answering. The best piece of advice to crack competency-based interviews is focused preparation.
To start with, read the job description, desired skills, company profile, and position under consideration. Then, based on the summary from the previous step, pick out the main competencies sought in the job and think of all examples in your past where you have demonstrated these competencies. Then widen your horizon and draw on various experiences from your past academic experiences, previous employment, or any voluntary or part-time work experience that you had. One can always practice the STAR framework and validate his or her responses with a friend or family member. As the saying goes, “Practice makes a man perfect.”
Few tips for applying the STAR method for behavior questions are as follows:
- Before the interview, remember and tag in your mind recent situations that show favorable behaviors or actions, especially involving course work, work experience, leadership, teamwork, initiative, planning, and customer service.
- Prepare short descriptions of each situation with necessary details included.
- Cast your response like a story with a beginning, middle, and conclusion.
- Always ensure to tell the outcome or result of your actions and portray your role positively even if the result itself was not favorable.
- Most importantly, always be honest. Remember that the interviewer has met so many people and is more experienced than you.
- Don’t skip any part of the story. A Story based on a weak foundation does not stand long.
- Follow 3Cs of communication, i.e., be clear, concise yet complete.
- Don’t generalize about several events; give a detailed accounting of one event.
- Digging one area of your resume will make the dialogue monotonous, so vary your examples from as many areas as possible.
To conclude, the STAR technique being a structured method, will guide your answers and calm your nerves if followed properly but do not overdo it. It is always advisable to keep some buffer for on-spot answering. Please remember that the interviewer is expecting a human and not an AI-powered robot, so make sure your responses come out naturally.
Always keep your answer realistic, conversational, concise, and complete. Happy interviewing! If you wish to take up free online courses to help you with interview preparation, you can head over to Great Learning Academy and opt for courses such as Smart English Basics for Professionals, Interview Etiquette & Power dressing, and more.
