Using STAR to shine…
The STAR framework, useful when sharing stories/situations from your career, is one that many people rely on to structure their answers. Like all frameworks it has its limitations (I will say more about frameworks in another post — stay tuned).
The basics are well known:
Situation — what was happening
Task — what was required of you
Actions — what you did
Results — what was the outcome
When I talk to people about this there’s one key point that many seem to miss. The more senior you are, the more important it is that the T was a conclusion you reached based on your analysis of the situation rather than a task that was assigned to you.
Here’s an example of a weak Task vs a strong Task.
Situation: We had a hard deadline for a launch. The team was executing well, but we were not able to keep pace with incoming feature requests.
Weak Task: I was asked to reduce scope so we could hit the launch date…
Stronger Task: I realized that we would not be able to launch on schedule unless we reduced scope…
To get to strong Ts, you should ask “Based on the situation, what was required of me?”. Your T should probably start with a phrase like “Given all of this, I realized I’d have to…”, or “To ensure success for the team it was clear I’d need to…”, or “I recognized it was critical that someone…”. This gives you the opportunity to highlight your insight and initiative.
Bonus STAR tip: t really elevate your answers, use STARLU instead!
What’s that?
We add an L, for learning. Briefly explain what you learned from the story, including perhaps what you’d do differently if faced with a similar situation. This demonstrates a capacity for self-reflection. Again the more senior you are, the more important this becomes.
We also add a U, for upgrade. What have you done to improve the way you work based on the learning. Especially at senior levels, we are looking for people who learn from challenging situations and then bake the benefits of that learning into their processes so that they don’t keep on making the same mistakes. It’s one thing to learn, but learning doesn’t automatically turn into growth.
