STARR in Your Next Interview

We have mentioned the STARR (Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection) interview response technique in a few articles and blogs now. In this blog we’re going to talk about common competency-based questions and how to make the best use of STARR in your next interview. The STARR method is easy to use and will guarantee a well-structured answer, leaving you to focus on the content of your response.

Competencies

Competencies are the abilities and behaviours that are necessary to be successful in a given role. A competency-based interview is systematic and each question targets a skill or skills needed for the job. Most companies will use a competency framework, which will include a mixture of technical and behavioural skills. Here are some common behavioural competencies used in competency-based interviews followed by examples:

1.??????Teamwork

• “Tell me about a time you led or worked in a successful team.”
• “How do you maintain good working relationships with your colleagues?

2.??????Resolving a Problem

• “Describe a situation where you were asked to do something that you'd never attempted previously.”
• “Give an example of a time you handled conflict in the workplace.”

3.??????Communication

• “Tell me about a time when your communication skills improved a situation.”
• “Tell me about a big decision you've made recently. How did you go about it?”

4.??????Leadership & Decision Making

• “Describe a situation where you showed leadership.”
• “Describe a project where you had to use different leadership styles to reach your goal.”

5.??????Responsibility

• “How have you demonstrated responsibility in the past?”
• “Tell me about a time you took responsibility for a project.”

This list is certainly not exhaustive and many roles require specific technical skills which will have their own unique questions and testing. ?But for the purposes of practising competency-based questions, use the examples above as a starting point, consider key examples from your career that you can use in your responses to best demonstrate your suitability for your next role.

STARR - Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection

Now you have a series of career highlights in mind, consider each and practise using the STARR technique.

• Situation?- Set the scene - What? Where? When?
• Task?- Explain the challenge you faced or the goal you were working towards.
• Action?- What steps did you take to achieve the goal?
• Result?- What was the outcome of your actions?
• Reflection - End your answer by describing how you’d do things differently if you were faced with the same situation or task. It’s also useful to describe how you developed your skills over the course of the experience.

The key to providing successful answers to competency questions is preparation, and the good news is that this is relatively straight forward to do, it just takes time. Firstly, it's essential that you read and understand the job advert. Next, from the job description or person specification pick out the main competencies that the employer is looking for and think of examples of when and how you've demonstrated each of these. Try to draw on a variety of experiences.

Familiarise yourself with the STARR approach to answering questions and practise your responses with a friend or recruiter.

MD Comment: “Organisations use competency based questions for a variety of reasons - consistency during interviews; ease of candidate comparison; ability to take the conversation and assessment beyond the CV and job description; ability to provide insight to a candidate’s future capability for other roles; and last but by no means least they assess your competence in certain scenarios. Despite the wide range of competency questions used, it is possible to prepare for them. Rather than try and second guess the questions you may be asked, choose 4 or 5 of the commonly used questions and practice using the STARR approach, once mastered you have one less thing to consider during the interview and can concentrate on recalling a relevant example for the question”?