Your ability to clearly respond to questions in an informed manner, relating your background to the question posed, will set you apart from others that stumble through questions. It is important to structure a well thought-out response, rather than doing a ‘brain-dump’ of all your knowledge relating to the question. An excellent method for structuring an answer is the S.T.A.R. method.

Situation or Task

Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You must describe a specific event or situation, not a generalized description of what you have done in the past. Be sure to give enough detail for the interviewer to understand. This situation can be from a previous job, from a volunteer experience, or any relevant event.

Action

Describe the action you took and be sure to keep the focus on you. Even if you are discussing a group project or effort, describe what you did -- not the efforts of the team.

Result

What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? If the result wasn’t what you expected, what would you do differently?

Example:

Question: Tell me about a time when you solved a major problem within your organisation?

Situation/Task (ST):

Advertising revenue was falling off for our magazine and large numbers of long-term advertisers were not renewing contracts.

Action (A):

I designed a new promotional packet to go with the rate sheet and compared the benefits of our magazines circulation with other advertisement media in the area. I also set-up a special training session for the account executives with an economics/marketing professor, who discussed competitive selling strategies.

Result (R):

We signed contracts with 15 former advertisers for daily ads and 5 for special supplements. We increased our new advertisers by 20 percent over the same period last year.

Important points to remember:

Don’t be afraid to pause for a few seconds • before answering. This will allow you time to structure a clear response using the STAR framework

Make sure your response is addressing the • question being asked

Don’t stress if the result you are about to give • them isn’t a favourable one. Make sure you can demonstrate where you went wrong and how you would do it differently in the future

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