Develop your Career: Interview Techniques

STAR

STAR is a mnemonic for:

S – Situation

T – Task

A – Action

R – Result

This is a good format for planning how to respond to questions you can anticipate. It is particularly helpful when answering behavioural questions.

Here is an example of a STAR answer to the behavioural question:

‘Tell me about a time when you’ve worked well as part of a team.’

Situation / ‘Last week we were very understaffed with one person on holiday and two off sick
Task / We had a huge job to get out of the door. Over 2000 envelopes needed to be stuffed and filled.
Action / Although it’s not something I usually get involved with, I prioritised my work to see what I could leave until the next day so that I could help the others
Result / The work was all done on time’

More STAR: Questions and Answers overleaf…

Question:

"Tell me about a time that you solved a problem to a tight timescale."

Answer:

Situation: "We were due to be presenting a budget report to the Finance Committee and the colleague who was presenting the report with me was ill on the day of the committee meeting."

Task: "It was my responsibility to present the paper so that the committee understood the report fully to be able to answer any questions."

Action: "I spoke to the members of the team who had provided the key pieces of information that related to the sections of the report my colleauge was going to present so that I understood everything. I thought about the kinds of questions members of the committee might ask about those parts of the report and prepared some responses which I checked with my colleague’s manager to make sure they were accurate."

Result: "I presented the report to the committee and was able to answer all their questions. At the end of the meeting the chairman commended me on my clear presentation and informed responses to the committee’s questions."

Question:

"Describe a situation when you had to deliver excellent customer service following a complaint"

Situation: "An external supplier rang up complaining that they'd waited more than two months for our finance team to pay them."

Task: "I needed to address the supplier's immediate query and find out what went wrong in the normal process."

Activity: "I apologised, got the details and passed them to the head of the finance team, who contacted the supplier and arranged that payment would be made within 3 working days. "

Result: "The supplier has not only continued to supply their service but thanked me for my quick and helpful response."

July 2014 Page 1