Quintessential Careers Blog

Behavioral interview questions can be tough. Sharing a smart answer may require thinking ahead, staying cool, telling the right story, and relying on the STAR method.  

 

Savvy employers are starting to look beyond traditional interview questions during the hiring process. Questions with one-word, yes-or-no answers (“Would you call yourself a team player?”) don’t reflect today’s workplace environment. Inquiries that are easy to field with stock, scripted responses (“What is your greatest weakness?” “Sometimes I work too hard.”) fail to showcase actual talents.

 

Instead, employers now embrace open-ended questions that encourage candidates to discuss their backgrounds and personalities in their own words. These are referred to as behavioral questions, and they’re usually presented as an invitation to tell a story. A few common examples might sound like this:

 

Describe a time when you had to choose between meeting a deadline and producing quality work. Which did you choose and why?

 

Have you ever had to direct others or lead a team with no official authority over that team? What were the circumstances and what did you do?

 

Unlike their outdated counterparts, these questions can’t be anticipated and answered by rote. In order to generate a meaningful response that can help both you and your employer get the most out of the session, you’ll have to dig deep and contemplate both your goals and your professional past before you speak. To do this, we recommend the STAR method:

 

Situation

Task

Action

Results

 

Situation

 

Set the stage to describe the prevailing circumstances under which your story took place. In order to do this properly, you’ll need to think about the event you’d like to describe, so take your time; your interviewer shouldn’t mind waiting while you assemble your thoughts.

 

Choose a moment that highlights your strengths and gives your interviewers the material they request. When you’re ready, explain who you were working for at the time, what challenges you were facing, the conditions under which you were operating, and any other relevant details.

 

Task

 

Contemplate that moment. What did you have to do in order to reach your goals? Perhaps you had to overcome a conflict with a difficult coworker. Maybe  you stayed up all night to correct a mistake. Did you have to come up with a brilliant solution to a thorny problem, rally a discouraged team, recover after a loss, sort out an interpersonal drama, or come up with the funds to bring a project to fruition? All of these hypothetical situations are stellar talking points that explore the depths of your professional character. Describe the moment you figured out exactly what you needed to do in order to get where you needed to be.

 

Action

 

Describe the actions you took to get from point A to point B. Knowing what needs to be done is one thing, but executing such steps is a different story. Explain each rung you climbed, even if they could have been different or better (you and your interviewer both know that hindsight is 20/20). At this point in the story, the results aren’t important—you’ll get to that later. Right now, focus on explaining what you did.

 

Results

 

Finally, explain how your story ended and discuss how close you came to reaching your goals. If you didn’t reach them at all, that’s fine. Sometimes crashes, mistakes, and setbacks make the best stories, especially if they leave us with valuable lessons.

 

Most employers aren’t interested in hearing how you saved the day with no obstacles or challenges to overcome (yawn). Though they may not say so, your interviewers would rather hear how you bounced back from a failure, or how you took a risk that didn’t pan out, bit off more than you could chew, or how you navigated through a difficult decision or no-win situation. Use your past and own it.
For more on how to handle difficult questions and impressive tough interviewers on the way to your dream job, explore the tools and tips available on Quintcareers.