How to Give High-Quality Responses to Interview Questions

A skilled interviewer will continually ask 'open' questions which by their nature are probing but will allow you to sell your skills and abilities.

Imagine an interview where the replies were all one-word answers or short sentences. It would not be very comfortable for either party to sit through and your chances of getting the job would be almost zero.

There are basically 5 key elements that the interviewer is looking for in a candidate. These are...

1. Can you do the job?
2. Will you do the job?
3. What is the problem I am here to solve?
4. Will you take direction and conform to the team ethic?
5. Will your behavior represent the department or manager in a professional manner?

How to Use the STAR Formula to Give Quality Responses

Many large organizations and government bodies will have a set of behavioral questions they ask each and every candidate, before scoring the candidate on their response. These questions will typically start off by "Tell me about a time".

The best way to answer these questions is in 4 parts, namely Situation, Task, Action & Result e.g. Tell me about a time where you had to resolve a complex problem

Situation - in June last year, I was the manager of the Client Liaisons Department when I was working at Acme company, and half of the office was away on a training day when we received a high volume of customer orders and inquiries.

Task - The problem I have was that we needed to keep our high standard of service up,

Action - So I needed to devise an urgent plan which consisted of...

Result - The senior manager complimented me for dealing with the crises in a calm and logical manner, we also kept our high standard of returning calls within a 2 hour period, and received no customer complaints about lack of response.

All your answers should be modeled with this interview and this is what the interview is looking to hear.