How to Ace Job Interviews with the STAR Method

September 29, 2020September 29, 2020 Jeriah 32 Comments graduate, job hunting, work advice, job interview

Getting a callback from a potential employer is a huge accomplishment, but it means nothing if you don’t make a good impression in your job interview. Thankfully, there is only one interview hack that you’ll ever need to guarantee a job offer. Enter: the STAR method!

When you enter a job interview, you only have one task: leave a good impression. We partly covered this when we advised you to create a brand out of yourself in our job-hunting tips. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You actually have to walk your talk, and if your walk is boring, you can kiss your chances of getting a job goodbye.

The worst sin you could commit in any competitive environment is to be forgettable.

What some people may not realize is if there’s a time to brag about all your achievements, it’s during job interviews. But you’d have to do it properly or you’d end up looking like a pretentious know-it-all or a liar who’s full of BS.

Thankfully, with the STAR method, you wouldn’t have to worry about that.

As you may have guessed already, STAR is an acronym pertaining to the points you have to hit in answering job interview questions. Simply put, it stands for: situation-task-action-result.

It’s now time to learn what it all means. Are you ready to come out with a job offer from your interviews?

S: Situation

About 70% of all job interviews is you telling stories about yourself. The keyword being yourself. They want to get to know you!

If you’re just bragging or repeating what’s already in your resume, then the interviewer has probably written you off as a generic candidate with nothing special to offer.

Your goal in a job interview is to stand out.

And nothing says standing out like a good story that’s purely your own. They’ve already heard multiple candidates throughout the entire interview process go on and on about how they’re “hardworking” and “passionate”. When you’re asked a question, the first thing you should do is get straight to the point by telling a specific situation to demonstrate your claim. Here’s an example:

Q: In your resume, you say that you’re good at time management. Can you tell me more about that?

A: “When I was in college, I was asked to run for president of my organization which could’ve been an issue since I was also working a part-time job at the time.”

Like I said, you’re telling a story about yourself. Think of this step as the part where you lay out the setting and characters as you suck in the interview into your world (with one brief statement, of course).

T: Task

Now that you’ve identified the situation, it’s time to say what exactly you had to face or overcome. What was your task, and what was your responsibility in it? What are you up against? The interviewer wants to know!

You’re the main character in this story, and this is the part where you lay out your mission. Let’s go back to the above example:

“When I was in college, I was asked to run for president of my organization which could’ve been an issue since I was also working a part-time job at the time. I wanted to do both, so I needed to figure out a way to balance my time and do well in both tasks.”

This is a crucial step in the STAR method to clear out any ambiguities with your story and why you brought it up in the first place. Basically, it answers the question: what’s the point?

A: Action

Come in for the kill with a satisfying climax to your story. Like we told you earlier, you have to come out as the hero in this job interview. And what better way to do that than to tell them how you (and ideally, nobody else but you) solved the problem?

You now have the obligation to tell how exactly you addressed your adversity by giving specific and concrete examples, actions, projects, etc. The worst thing you could do is give a motherhood statement or a very broad, blanket solution.

“When I was in college, I was asked to run for president of my organization which could’ve been an issue since I was also working a part-time job at the time. I wanted to do both, so I needed to figure out a way to balance my time and do well in both tasks. Knowing how big an opportunity being president in the organization would be, I made sure to tell my manager of my plans two months before running. By doing this, we were able to work out a schedule where all my shifts would fall on weekdays so I’d have the weekend to focus on extracurricular tasks.

Do you see how detailed that was? If you articulate your solution vaguely, you might end up “undercrediting” yourself or sounding like just another generic candidate. You also wouldn’t want to take too much time telling your story, or you’ll bore the interviewer to death.

As a bonus tip, it’s always good to bring up situations that you know are unique to you alone. Or if you can’t think of one, go for a situation where a creative action was done to address the task at hand.

Again, you should always strive to stand out. Making yourself memorable in a good light is how you win in these interviews. The interviewer has probably heard how a candidate more than they need to in one lifetime.

And the beauty with the STAR method is that you can tell your tale without sounding too arrogant!

R: Result

Now, it’s time to you end your narrative with a satisfying conclusion. You probably know how a badly-written ending can leave a bitter taste in your mouth. So if there’s a part that you wouldn’t want to mess up, it’s this one.

The STAR method requires you to end the situation with the result to the action you took. Did you increase sales or help increase efficiency within a team? By how much?

You should be as specific and concrete as possible when giving out results. If your success could have been measured in numbers or percentages, it’s best to tell that too. Some examples would include earned revenue, event attendees, social media numbers, and improvement in success rate, to name a few.

Be very honest with the results you give because these interviewers can smell bull from a mile away.

Perhaps most importantly, you should go back to the point you were trying to make in the first place. You wouldn’t want the interviewer to be left asking, what was the point of telling that story?

In the end, I did become the president of my organization and continued working at my part-time job. It was difficult at times, but shifting my work schedule enabled me to make sure I excel at both things without burning myself out too much. Both tasks are already difficult by themselves, but regardless, I got a good recommendation from my boss and was able to head the organization projects listed in my resume… all thanks to my time management.

While the STAR method is powerful, practicing your answers before a job interview is truly the best way to prepare. So open up that list of common job interview questions and get to talkin’!

Do you have any questions about the STAR method? Leave them in the comments below! If you loved this article, then you’ll probably love the other advice we have for you here.

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Featured Image: Gustavo Fring