Are you an interviewing STAR?

The ‘STAR' Approach for Answering a Question

More and more interviews are focusing on a behaviour approach, namely asking you about something you have done in the past. This can be a structured intereview (where you are given an idea of what they are looking for you to demonstrate) or behavioural event interview (where you are asked to talk more broadly about an event).

When asked a behavioural question - ‘describe a time', ‘tell me about when' etc - you should take a structured approach to the response (even when the interviewer does not specifically ask you to). This structured response goes by the anagram STAR.

S: Situation - describe the situation
T: Task or problem - what dilemma or problem did you face?
A: Action - what action did you take?
R: Result - what was the result of your action?

You can best prepare for these types of questions by thinking about examples of past achievements which are most suited to the job you are applying for. In some ways the exact example is not critical since they are looking for demonstration of specific competencies but the opportunity to demonstrate relevant past experience and achievement should not be wasted.