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Understanding the STAR interview format

There are unique questions you can ask candidates during interviews to help them decide if they are suitable for the job. These questions give an in-depth understanding of candidate behaviour and their ability to solve problems. As an employer, read how you can use the STAR interview format to get quality answers from candidates by asking behavioural questions.

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What is the STAR interview format?

STAR is an acronym for Situation, Task, Action and Result. You can use the STAR Interview format to determine how a candidate’s past behaviour and experiences will help them to adapt and work on various tasks at the company if hired. During a STAR interview, you will ask behavioural questions to a candidate who has to give answers based on their previous work experience. A candidate explains what tasks needed to be done in that situation and the actions they took to accomplish the tasks and what the final results were.

Benefits of the STAR interview format

Using the STAR Interview format enables you to ask candidates specific questions to determine if they have the skills needed for the job. The questions direct the candidate to talk about real work situations where they used certain skills to accomplish the needed results and the challenges they overcame. Their response helps you as an employer to know if the candidate is suited to work for your company. The STAR interview format also helps you to predict a candidate’s success potential accurately since it’s more realistic and fact based.

What to look for in an answer that uses the STAR interview format

In a STAR Interview format, a candidate proves their professional ability through real-life examples of how they handled past job tasks, challenges they faced and the results accomplished. You can determine a candidate is suited for a job if their story is comprehensible, they are honest with their failures and are confident narrating them.

Below is how the STAR Interview Format works:

  • Situation: The candidate narrates a real work story of a situation they were involved in that needed a solution. The situation can be from a past job, school or home. Evaluate if their story is clear and answers your question clearly and contextually to the question you asked.
  • Task: A candidate defines the tasks that needed to be done in that situation and what the end goal was. Their answer will help you know about the responsibilities they had where they worked previously.
  • Action: Here a candidate describes the individual roles they performed in addressing the situation. Their answer should show their personal traits like decision making, leadership, conflict resolution, budgeting and creativity.
  • Results: The candidate needs to explain the results that came from their actions, lessons learned and challenges faced. A great answer should quantify a candidate’s individual achievements and how they benefited their previous organisation.

Example of a STAR format answer

You can gauge a candidate’s competency by how well they answer the behavioural questions asked during the STAR interview format. Below an example answer using the STAR interview format:

Question: Tell us about a time you had to represent your supervisor at a meeting

Situation: “At my previous job, my supervisor, who was the Head of Insurance Sales, fell sick in the morning and on my way to work asked me to detour and go meet a potential client. I’d never met the client and I didn’t have my work laptop with me to do a presentation.”

Task: “I didn’t want to keep the client waiting, so I went to meet him at his office without my presentation laptop.”

Action: “Since my supervisor handled different portfolios than me, I decided to break the ice with the client, by telling him about the new family insurance policy we had introduced that matures quickly and I had enough knowledge about.”

Result: “After our impromptu meeting, the client was so impressed by my explanations he bought four education insurance policies for his children and signed up his company to the policy my supervisor had proposed to him. I ended up earning a commission of 15% for each education policy I sold to him.”

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