How the STAR Approach Improves Your Answers in Competency-Based Interviews

In the competitive workplace faced in the modern world, the STAR technique improves the interview skills of all potential job candidates, leading to more job offers and better prospects. This is especially true at competency-based interviews.

STAR Technique in Summary

The STAR approach to interviews gives interviewees a greater level of control over the meeting and is an accepted method of answering standard question, sure to impress any panel of interviewers.

In essence this technique consists of providing interviewers with succinct answers to difficult question by:

• Establishing the SITUATION or context to any answer
• Giving a brief summary of the TASK required
• Recounting the ACTIVITY taken to resolve the issue or problem
• Summarising the RESULT of your actions

The STAR technique is particularly useful for candidates in competency-based interviews, where interviewers pose a variety of different skills and knowledge-based questions and examples that need to be answered with examples of jobs and tasks already carried out. Most interview candidates nowadays discover an element of competency-based questions within the interview, so it does make sense to prepare and rehearse answers to typical questions.

How STAR Approach Will Improve your Interview Skills

No matter what your level of expertise or the type of jobs you are applying to fill, adopting the STAR approach and rehearsing a variety of answers to the typical questions likely to be asked within any interview will prove of immense benefit. Your confidence levels will be raised along with the speed and ability to reflect and answer questions raised during your interviews.

Your interviewer will be impressed by the objective manner in which you answer task-related questions using the STAR approach. In general, questions requiring this answer format will relate to past job experiences, social skills and team working. The question will probably start off as follows:

“Tell me about a time when . . . “

You could be asked to describe difficult situations within the workplace, times you have handled customer complaints or stress and pressure at work, how you cope with troublesome customers or the ways you have handled anger or bullying from work colleagues. Recent graduates will probably be questioned about teamwork skills and negotiation/communication issues. It is immaterial what work experiences or levels of jobs you’ve held down in the past because competency-based interviews tend to be the norm within HR so any candidate should be prepared for questions of this nature.

Well qualified and experienced job candidates who have worked within senior roles and management within organisations should anticipate a variety of probing and in depth questions from interviewers to check levels of competency and experience. Thorough preparation prior to interviews is essential for any senior role within any discipline, so it’s essential to spend time preparing answers to as many routine questions as possible. We have prepared some information on common competency-based questions and it’s easy to see that the STAR approach of answering will be an ideal technique to adopt for most of these typical interview questions.

Using the STAR technique regularly gives structure and coherence to your answers and is an impressive methodology to adopt within interviews. Interviewers and HR professionals will have been given training in the STAR approach and will be impressed by candidates adopting this strategy to deliver information.

If you’re nervous about forthcoming interviews, contact Interview Skills Consulting to find out how our team can help you improve your interview skills.