The interview process is stressful, and it’s easy to get stuck in your response and miss the overall point of the question. The STAR method can help you understand what you should say and how to frame your answer.

Understand the question

The first step is to understand the question. Ask the interviewer if there’s anything you can do to help them better understand their own perspective, and then ask them to clarify what they are looking for in an answer. If there’s no clear idea of what they’re looking for, ask if there may be a different way of phrasing things that would give you more insight into their thinking. At this point, it’s also important to think through not just how you’ll respond but also how your answers will come across:

• Do they need any additional information from their interviewer?
• Do they want to hear a specific story or anecdote?
• Are there any additional details you can provide that will help your interviewer understand your perspective better?

These are all important questions to ask yourself when preparing for an interview, and it’s best to do them in advance so you can make sure that your answers are well-rehearsed.

Consider Your Strategy

When you’re asked a question, consider the situation. What’s your approach? How do you want to answer this question? In other words, what are your goals in the decision-making interview?

Think about the company and its culture. What are their values and philosophies when it comes to hiring employees? How do they hire people who can fit into those values and philosophies—or if not, why not? If there’s an opportunity for growth at this company within their current structure (i.e., more responsibility), then maybe this role will be right for you! That said…

Describe Your Procedure

The key to answering interview questions is to understand the question. If you don’t, it’s likely that you’ll come up with an answer that doesn’t fit the situation and doesn’t give any insight into how you think or feel about a problem.

The first step in explaining your process is understanding what they’re asking and why they’d want to hear it from you. It’s also important not just for this interview but for all interviews: if there’s something about yourself that makes interviewing difficult for some reason (like being shy), then knowing how those kinds of experiences can affect your work will help them understand why hiring decisions might be different from other candidates’ experiences at their company.

Provide Examples

An interviewer is likely to ask you about your decision-making process in order to get a sense of how well you think on your feet and make decisions. To answer this question, you should provide an example of when you made a decision. This could be anything from the time when someone asked for your opinion on something to the time when someone else asked if they should go with their own plan instead of yours (which might be more efficient).

Next, give details about what happened during this event—what was said and done? What were the outcomes? How did things turn out? For example:

• “I heard from my boss that he needed our team’s help with building some new software.”
• “We decided that our best option would be to create some kind of new feature where users could submit feedback about an article on their website.”
• “We presented the idea to our boss, and he seemed pretty interested in it.” So we decided to go with it. “After a few months, the software was finished, and we launched it on our website.” “It’s been really popular ever since.”

These are just a few examples of how you might use the past perfect tense in everyday life. You can also use it to talk about things that happened before other events, but it’s important to note that this tense is only used for actions that took place in the past.

Follow-Up Questions

You may be asked to follow up on a question that you didn’t answer. You can respond with:

• “I don’t know the answer.”
• “I don’t have time right now, but I’ll look into it.”

If you don’t know the answer and want more time to think about it, tell them so! Or if they ask for your opinion and you’re not sure how to go about answering their question in a way that makes sense for both of you and also doesn’t sound like an excuse, say something like, “Let me look into this more carefully before I give my answer.”

Practice your STAR method answers before your interview.

The STAR method is a way to structure your answer. It stands for situation, task, action, and result. The first question you’ll be asked is usually something like, “Tell me about yourself” or “What are your strengths?” In this scenario, it would be helpful to have practiced answers ready in advance so that when it comes time for the interviewers to ask questions like these, they can answer without hesitation or confusion!

The best way to practice your STAR method answers is to write them down. Write down an answer to the question and then read it aloud until you have memorized it. Then, practice telling the story by starting with a situation (where you were), followed by a task (what you needed to do), and ending with what happened as a result of your actions.

Conclusion

It’s worth noting that this post is not a substitute for legal advice. The information here is meant to help you prepare, but it may not apply to your situation. If you have any questions or concerns about your case, consult with an attorney and provide them with all relevant information (including the links above).

Your resume is one of the most important documents you will ever write. A resume is a sales document, and as such, it should be written in such a way as to sell yourself to prospective employers. It’s not an autobiography or a biography, and there’s no reason why it should be any longer than two pages—one page if possible.

If you need help, we have a team of experts who can assist you in writing a resume that will get you noticed.