How to shine at interviews with the STAR response

Chances are that you have heard of the STAR response. But do you know how to use it without sounding like a robotic news reporter.

The STAR response

STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Results. It’s a great template for answering those behavioural questions that start with “Give us an example of a time when you…”. What I really love about using the STAR response is that it’s more than just a template. The STAR response allows you to time to think so your answers sounds coherent – even if you’re freaking out!

Let’s practice this with a standard interview question: “Give us an example of a time when you had to deal with a difficult customer”.

If you’ve ever worked in any kind of customer service role you’ll be able to answer this easily!

Say the first employer that comes to mind. Start by explaining the challenging Situation and how your got there.

“My first job was at the counter of Budget Burgers. Sometime customers would be served the wrong meal or be overcharged and they would get angry.”

Next is your Task. What responsibility did you have to fix this situation?

“I would try to calm them down and find out what the problem was.”

The Action part is where you say specifically what you would do – what actions you would take – to complete your Task.

“I would listen to their complaint and I would try to understand what happened. If I could fix the problem, like a wrong order, I would fix it. If it was an overcharge or some other kind of issue I would offer an alternative or ask if they wanted to speak to my manager.”

Finally, it’s time to let the interviewers know about your great Results! Where your Actions successful, and what did you learn?

“I found that by calmly talking through the issue and showing understanding, the customer calmed down faster. Fixing it myself was the fastest solution and always worked well. But when I couldn’t fix it and I offered an alternative and the option to speak to my manager, the customer had choices and felt like they were in control and they were less likely to argue and more likely to want to offer solutions or accept one of mine. When I was a trainee I would call my manager over a lot, but I learned from watcher her way of dealing with the customers and I became better at it.”

That’s it! When the interviewers ask the question, don’t get overwhelmed, just think of each part of STAR one piece at a time and it will all come together. In your mind, you’ll be thinking “What was my task back then in that situation? What actions did I take? How did it all end?”. All the interviewer will hear is one coherent answer.

“My first job was at the counter of Budget Burgers. Sometime customers would be served the wrong meal or be overcharged and they would get angry. I would try to calm them down and find out what the problem was. I would listen to their complaint and I would try to understand what happened. If I could fix the problem, like a wrong order, I would fix it. If it was an overcharge or some other kind of issue I would offer an alternative or ask if they wanted to speak to my manager. “I found that by calmly talking through the issue and showing understanding, the customer calmed down faster. Fixing it myself was the fastest solution and always worked well. But when I couldn’t fix it and I offered an alternative and the option to speak to my manager, the customer had choices and felt like they were in control and they were less likely to argue and more likely to want to offer solutions or accept one of mine. When I was a trainee I would call my manager over a lot, but I learned from watcher her way of dealing with the customers and I became better at it.”

Here is another example that I have used in interviews:

“I worked in a team that processed timesheets, working with about 6 other team members at the same level. One of the newer members came to me for advice because our Team Leader kept telling her she was too slow. The frequent negative feedback was making my colleague anxious, which made her even slower because she was scared of making mistakes. I sat with her to go back over the basics, and offered to give her all the most straightforward timesheets for the next week so that she could build her confidence, and then slowly reintroduce the more challenging work. I made sure to take large stacks of timesheets and sort them out so I kept the complex ones and gave my colleauge the others. This slowed down my own output for the week, but increased the overall team performance. After a week my colleague’s speed was up, she was able to take on the complex work again with confidence, my speed went back to what it was, our overall team performance had improved and we had a happy Team Leader!“

You can see how the example above can be used to answer a variety of different questions, for example questions an about underperforming team member, giving training, being a proactive member of a team, problem-solving, management skills… the list goes on. By having prememorised answers like this in my memory, I can go into interviews and often only have one or two questions that I actually need to think about. The rest of them I can pull from a mental database of answers like this one.

If you need help thinking of the questions you might be asked, have a look at Recruitloop; it has a good list of different behavioural questions, such as “Give me an example of a time when you had to be quick in coming to a decision.” Have a go and if you want to share your answers, put them in the comments below.

^{Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash}