Earning STAR on a Job Interview

This post is labeled under Career Move

Top companies continuously look for good people to join their organization. It even avails the services of headhunters. Mind you, top-notch human resource department (HRD) and head hunter companies are good. They know their business well: to get the best people there is in the market. They exist to entice the brightest. Are you one of them?

So you placed your data on the online job search engines. You scanned the best companies and applied for the position available you think that will help you move up. They liked your resume and you are invited for an interview. You felt lucky.

“Now, you mentioned you were part of this big project. Can you walk us through on how you participated from start to finish?” You gave at least a couple of sentences to answer the questions. Another set of questions were raised to validate your statements. You looked to the eyes of your interviewers. They were not convinced. You did not get the job.

Most of the applicants are clueless of what went wrong during their interview. They say that they were confident and true in answering all questions raised to them. But does an applicant possess a true STAR to get hired?

Yes, there should be an outline (and direction) in answering questions like mentioned above. STAR stands for Situation/Task, Action and Results. You need to establish first what particular situation you were in or what task was needed to accomplish. Actions should be enumerated on how you came up with the solutions on the challenges set to you. Were you effective in handling all the hurdles that came your way? What was the result?

A couple of sentences may not suffice in answering questions that need detailed answers. You need to explain. But you need to be concise and with direction. You should able to connect the situation or task that led you to make actions which produced great results.

Avoid vague statements that need further validations on the part of the interviewer. Statement such as “I coordinated effectively with the rest of the team until we finished the project” should be re-phrased in a different way. On the checklist of the interviewer, this is a false STAR and needs follow-up questions. How effective did you coordinate what?

A better answer would be like this:

“We were on the last phase of our project but the members of the testing team were assigned on our satellite office far from our head office and working in parallel with other assignments. They needed to work on our project that was due 3 days before the deadline (Situation/Task). I suggested that I’ll email all the program files to them so they will no longer travel back to our office maximizing the time left. They got the files and tested the programs. The files were sent back and forth thru emails with the corrections needed by our development team on which I coordinated too (Action). Our project manager was pleased because we finished the project a day before the set deadline (Results)”.

I was asked with somewhat similar question I mentioned above when I was applying for the job as Analyst. The interviewer had a checklist with her and asked the same question on two different situations that she had noticed on my resume. I answered in a STAR style format. I even paused every time she needed to write something on her checklist and waited for her attention before I speak again. I smiled often and looked to her eyes to give the sincerity of my answers during the course of the interview. She sensed that I did my homework. We were even laughing in between; it was a breeze. I got the job.

So, go earn those stars. Have fun. Be sure that is a true STAR!

No falling stars, please.

Good luck!