If you are reading this article, you are probably preparing for a professional interview. Whether it’s for a job, an internship or for your studies, it’s always interesting to know some techniques to improve your ease and ability during an interview, to become the best candidate! In this article, we will show you how to prepare your answers with the STAR interview technique.
It is a very common way of structuring some interviews. Interviewers use this technique to understand how the candidate would react in particular situations.
This type of interview is designed to avoid prejudices and to get the most objective picture of the candidate. This method is particularly used in organizations and large companies, so it’s important to know and to prepare for it.
Direct, this method answers the question directly and bluntly.
Logical, progressing from the beginning to the end.
Meaningful, because it allows you to give a lot of personal information: it’s different for each candidate.
Don’t think about new details while you are answering, you will be beating around the bush and your answers will be too long. Say what you need to say and if the interviewer asks you at the end of the interview, it will be the time to give details. For our example, we will use a candidate who is in a job interview situation (Web Communication Manager).
Understand what is asking the interviewer. Take a few seconds (5 to 8 seconds) to organize your answer.
What’s going on? Provide the context to attract attention, make an impression.
Example: The company receives a complaint by the Facebook message because no one responded to its previous email.
What happened? How to solve this problem? Describe the problem.
Example: Answer the customer immediately by apologizing and asking for his email address in order to solve the problem.
The email software detected the customer’s address as spam and no one saw the email.
Explain what you did to solve the problem.
Example: Once I found this email marked as spam, I replied to the customer (the customer wanted information about the allergen in a product he had received as a gift). I answered his question and sent him a coupon in return.
Savings, reward, recognition for your actions.
Example: The customer was satisfied and shortly afterwards spent the coupon in one of the stores. He continues to follow us on social networks and is even an active member. I have modified the spam settings of our software to avoid another mistake like this. Every week, I also check spam to be sure.
No one will notice that you are using a specific technique, they will simply notice that you are using a well-articulated example. You can prepare a few examples before the interview, that way you won’t start from scratch. Partnership International hopes this little guide to improving your interview skills will really help you!
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