Career Confidence

23Be a STAR

You've finally landed the interview! Now what? Well, as you read in the previous chapter, the best way to prepare is to practice, research, and have at least three or four very specific stories about your career successes that you can refer to during the interview. While interviewing can feel like the Wild West, and quite literally anything can happen, the most common method of interviewing today is something called the STAR Method.

STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, Result, and is one of the most popular forms of behavior-based interviewing.

I am going to give you three specific examples of questions, answers, and how to best prepare for these questions.

Question 1: Can you provide an example of a time when you had to work on a challenging team project with a tight deadline? How did you handle it, and what was the outcome?

Situation: “In my previous role as a project manager at XYZ Company, we were tasked with launching a new product within a very competitive market. Our team was given a tight deadline of six weeks to complete the project.”

Task: “My responsibility was to lead a cross-functional team consisting of members from marketing, design, engineering, and production. Our goal was to develop the product, create a marketing campaign, and ensure it was ready for launch within the specified time frame.”

Action: “To address this challenge, I immediately called a team meeting to outline our strategy and set clear expectations. We broke down the project into ...