Be the STAR of Your Job Interview

Sitting for a job interview can be one of the most stressful parts of your job-seeking experience. Unfortunately, when you’re nervous about your performance, how you look and what to say. You’ll often find yourself giving awkward, rambling responses that only make you sound more nervous and less competent.

It’s time to break the cycle of interview anxiety.

When you learn to control your responses, you learn to control the interview. The good news is that it’s easy to learn this control. All it takes is some forethought and a little something we call the STAR Method.

The STAR Method is more than just an easy way to prepare for interview questions. It’s a way of story-telling that can be used for anything from your interview, to elevator pitches, blog posts and even talking with your friends and family. Any time you want to concisely describe a situation, just follow the STAR Method below.

Situation: What was the background of the situation? Keep this short and sweet: 1-2 sentences. This is where most people tend to ramble and never get to the rest of the story.

Task: What did you need to accomplish? Think of this as the goal of the project.

Action: What steps did you take to achieve those goals? Be very organized and list the steps you took in chronological order explaining briefly why you made those decisions.

Results: What was the outcome of your actions? This is the part almost everyone skips but it is the MOST important part of the story. It tells how you were successful and that you will be successful in the job you are interviewing for.

For example:

I had a software conversion project I managed at Acme Company last year. We were moving from an AS400 system to SAP and the company had 5 different locations and several departments which would be affected so it was a high-priority complex project.

I needed to plan and implement the conversion with as little down time as possible, within budget, and to the satisfaction of all of the users.

I used the PMBOK method to gather research about what we needed the new program to do, interviewed and surveyed current users, put together two teams of staff: one to make the conversion and one to train the staff. Then I arranged training sessions for staff and rolled out a beta version and fixed the bugs. Then we went live over a weekend.

We ended up under budget, on time and with only 10% of users submitting tickets in the following month. I can do the same thing for you with this project.

And that’s all there is to it. Take some time to complete our Interview Trainer. commit the STAR Method to memory. Its real value is not in the responses that you prepare, but in teaching you the ability to think on your feet and formulate coherent and concise responses to questions on the go.