Lisa Virtue:

Welcome to Her Career Studio. I'm your host and career coach Lisa Virtue. Here we live by the mantra Thrive at work so you can thrive in life because we know you are more than your day job. Each episode includes actionable tips and often mentor stories to not only boost your professional success, but also enhance your personal well being. Join me as we explore ways to ensure your career uplifts your life as you strive to achieve work life harmony. Head to hercareerstudio.com for free resources and coaching services to help support you during career transitions and challenges such as when you are looking to find and land that next ideal job or promotion or are leading a new team, we're here to support you. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and please hit the thumbs up or leave a five star review if you are finding the content useful. This helps us keep going in our mission to help women in their careers. Thank you so much for your support.

Welcome back to the Her Career Studio podcast. Today we are going to talk about interviews and how to prepare for them. The way that you structure your answers can make a big difference in how clear and engaging you are in an interview as best as you can. You want to tell a story that is interesting to your interviewer. Remember, this is one of the three simple steps to eliminate overwhelming anxiety in your job search. So in this episode of Her Career Studio, we'll dive into the art of storytelling and interviews using the STARR method. And I'm going to describe STARR S T A R R for this particular method. Discover how to structure your answers to behavioral interview questions in a captivating and engaging way.

Learn how to use the STARR Technique to highlight your skills, experiences and problem solving abilities. Now don't Forget to visit hercareestudio.com for access to our free resources including the ChatGPT resume, Brainstorming Partner and a free guide to accompany this episode which is my storytelling using the STARR Method. So essentially everything I'm going to tell you today I've got a document that you can go and download in Google and swipe a copy for yourself and then fill in your own stories so that you have a structured response to popular interview questions and you can show up more confidently. So head to hercrestudio.com, find the show notes or find the free resource in the Free Resources tab that is Storytelling and Interviews with the STARR Method. So the easiest way to think about structuring your answers for interviews is remembering what the acronym STARR stands for. Why are we focusing on this? Well for one, there are many companies that actually will rate you as a candidate based on how you tell your stories in behavioral interviews. So when they say, tell me about a time when you did this. Tell us an example of a time.

Let me just make something up off the cuff right now. Tell me a time you had a conflict with a customer. Right. They're looking for a specific example of experience that is aligned to the role that they're hiring for. And they want to see, basically, they're looking for how you behaved in the past. Behavioral interview will dictate how you behave in the future. Because most psychologists know that we don't change much as humans. We can evolve and grow, which is why we're going to talk about that second R& STARR in a minute from our experience.

But we typically will behave similarly, and we will learn from these examples. And so they want to know, what kind of experience have you learned from? We. Where have you gone with your career so far? What kind of level are you at in this case? So that's why people use behavioral interviews. Now, the STARR method came about for some companies, literally grading the candidates and writing down each of the pieces of the acronym S, T, A, R. And then the interviewers would write down, okay, did they explain the situation for S? For example, they hit the T in here, the A and the R. And if the candidate failed to hit any of those steps within their answer, they'd get disqualified or they'd get a low rating. So a lot of companies, larger companies in particular, started putting out guides to interview at their company. Right? So for instance, if you have an interview at Amazon, they'll give you a guide and say, make sure you're using the STARR format to answer behavioral interview questions.

The reason they're doing that is because they'll actually grade you on it and they want to make sure that you're set up for success in the interviews. A lot of companies actually want you to succeed. People show up to interviews looking for the ideal candidate. They want you to do well. So whenever a company gives you that information, those resources pay attention and use them. If you're not getting those resources, following the STARR format is really important and really impactful because it's still a great way to flow through storytelling. Even if the other side of the table is not specifically looking for that STARR format, it will keep you structured in your answers and eliminate the overwhelm of, did I explain that in enough detail and succinctly enough that I captivated my audience and they knew what I was talking about and I didn't ramble on. So STARR format helps you out in so many ways.

There's a lot of other acronyms out there. You can even see some that are similar to STARR, like soar. It's just S O A R. I always just go back to STARR. And the reason for this is because there are companies that will rate you on it still to this day. So we're going to talk about that in particular today. And this is a way to storytell in interviews and a really effective way to prepare for interviews. Because once you get to the interview, my advice is you throw away the script.

You remember the examples and the stories you prepared for, and then you have notes that are just bullet points and write down what STARR stands for. So as you're flowing through an example, you can glance at your notes and make sure you stay on track, but it's not going to feel scripted in the moment. So that's my advice as a career coach. By the way, if you don't have someone to do mock interviews with, make sure you do that before these big impactful interviews coming up. If you've got an interview coming up that you know is for your dream job or your dream company or, or you're just barely getting any interviews and you need to convert an interview to a job offer, it's high stakes for you. Make sure you're doing mock interviews with colleagues, peers, former bosses, anyone that will understand this kind of format and make sure that they give you good feedback on how you're delivering it as well. Some people that are really close to us in our life are not good mock interviewers because they'll say, oh, that was great. Oh, I loved it.

And they're not going to give you valuable feedback. You might need to enhance and be more compelling so that you're that standout candidate in an interview. This is also a good time to pay for coaching. I do mock interviews with people that are my clients, of course, on ongoing engagements. But also if you just want to pop into my calendar because you have an impactful interview coming up, you can do that as well. So go to hercarestudio.com and I'll make sure that the link to my calendar is on there. You can also find different platforms online. Like if you're a technical candidate and you want people from certain companies, you can typically find that.

If you go Google it and you search for mock interviews for and then you state the company or you state the title, you can find some specific interviewers like that too. I'M not a technical interviewer. I help a lot of clients that are technical in nature, but I help with the behavioral side and the strategy of their job search. So for me, I can't help with the technical interviews. So I always recommend different platforms for that. There's places like PRMP that have interview. Like you can do a technical interview with a peer and it's free. And you can also volunteer to be a technical interviewer.

There's places like that when it comes to mock interviews for behavioral sites, sometimes you can find mentors that will do this for free or volunteer people taking pro bono clients. But that's a little fewer and far between. So again, any. If you're going to pay for one thing to get coached on within the job search, I highly recommend at this stage, when you're interviewing, that's a really good use of your money. Because even if you don't land that role, you are going to take with you all that feedback and guidance and clarity of how you're coming across that you don't get when you're doing the interview. People are just not giving feedback. Typically, once once in a while, you'll get a gem of someone interviewing you, or you'll personally know someone interviewing you or you got the job and then they give you feedback on how you did in the interview. But it's just so rare to get that feedback, isn't it? Usually it falls short.

People don't want to tell you how you did. Or again, there's a bias and they're nice, like, yeah, you did great. You want to know how you're really doing. Why are some of those interviews converting for you into job offers and why are some not? That's why it's really valuable to get that feedback. So whether you have someone in your life that will give you honest feedback and knows what people are looking for, or you want to pay for a coach, I just recommend all of it. Okay? Best use of your money and time. So make sure you prepare, prepare, prepare. I can't stress that enough.

If you're not preparing for interview answers and you're not practicing them out loud, then most likely you're not going to nail it. Some people are like, I'm just so good at interviews. I show up and I get the jobs. Okay, if that's you, you don't even need to listen to this episode. Most people are here because they're not getting those conversions or they're rambling or they've gotten feedback that the interview itself was what caused them to Fail or they feel it when they walk away from an interview. So if those describe you, then you're in the right place. So let's keep going. We're going to talk about STARR.

So STARR stands for S situation, T task, A action, R result, and the second R, reflection. So include each of these pieces in that order in your response. However, you can always put the result first and make it like a hook. You know, like in social media, there's these really fast hooks that people come up with to captivate their audience and make them listen more. Or lots of movies and shows will now show you the ending at the beginning because that's the hook. It keeps people engaged in what's coming next, how did they get there? So you can put the first R first, which is a result. You could also do the reflection first. For instance, if it's that question about conflict with a customer, you could say, oh, I'd love to tell you a time when I had a customer that I learned from for the rest of my career.

Here's how I learned. That's partly the reflection, right? So just kind of hook them, captivate them. That's always an option here. But you can also be a traditionalist and just do STARR in order. So let's go over each one individually, and then I'm going to show you some examples of how it all comes together. So write this down or go grab the Google Doc, go swipe it. S is situation. Set the scene, describe the situation, and provide the context of what was going on.

In this example, for instance, if it's a conflict, why did the conflict or challenge arise? What's the context of the problem? Maybe it was the project that you're talking about. Why were you doing this project? What was the business outcome they were looking for? What was going on? Who was there? When I say situation and set the scene, all of those S's, I always say set the stage. Like when you're in a play pretending you're a narrator, saying, here were the players, here's where we were. This is, you know, pull people in the room with you so they can really see what was going on in the situation. Now we go to T for task. Task could literally be, what were you tasked with in this situation or project? It can be your role. It can be what led you to take action, what happened to lead you to take action. So the T could also be O for opportunity.

What was the opportunity here for you? But T is task. So first you're setting the scene in the situation, then you're going to explain what you were tasked with or your role in that conflict, that situation, that project. Next is A for action. What action or actions did you take in this situation? What specific actions did you take to, let's say, resolve a conflict or solve a problem? Then R. What was the result? How were your actions received? What was the result and outcome of, let's say, a conflict? Was it resolved? What happened at the end for this project? What was the result of the project? Then we go to R for Reflection Here. Share your reflection on what you learned from this conflict. How will you react differently next time? What'd you learn about yourself? What are the takeaways from this situation? So s situation T task or role? A action R result and then R Reflection the STARR technique is excellent for any interview questions asking about your experience and how you dealt with different problems in the past or even things that you are proud of. Like tell us about a project you are proud of.

Follow the STARR format to answer it. Okay, let's dive a little bit deeper into each of these and then get into some examples. So as for the situation, just a couple sentences here, maybe a small paragraph is all you need. You're giving the background so the interviewer knows the context of what you're going to be talking about. At a bare minimum, you should mention where you were and at what point in your career this took place place. Optionally, you can also add a sentence that summarizes more specifically what you're going to talk about. This can help make sure your interviewer knows what to focus on, especially for more involved and detailed stories. You can even name it.

Let me give you an example. I'm going to name this one. So the example question is tell me about a time when you experienced conflict at work. This is going to be directed towards a marketing executive candidate. They're going to use the STARR format. So for the situation, the quick hook is going to be yeah, I'd love to tell you about the digital versus print conflict that I had at my previous company. We were launching a major product campaign and our marketing team had developed a comprehensive strategy that was focused on the digital channels. However, our sales director strongly believed that a traditional offline approach, primarily events and direct mail, would be more effective.

So this disagreement created tension between the two teams as we were both convinced our strategies would drive the best results. Now we're going to move on to task for this example. This can be just one or two sentences and it comes along part and parcel with a situation. So you want to share what you were actually trying to achieve that led you to take action in the next step. Basically, you're setting up the answer to their question and giving them all the relevant details so that you can demonstrate what you're talking about and you're specifically talking about what your role was in this situation. So here's task for the same question about a conflict at work for a marketing executive. As the marketing executive leading the digital strategy, my role was to align our efforts with the company's growth objectives while ensuring collaboration between both teams. My challenge was to find a solution that addressed the concerns of both marketing and sales while delivering the best possible results for the company.

So it's very clear there what the role of this candidate was in this situation. Now we're going to move on to a for action. Again, just a few sentences. This part you can elaborate a little bit more. We're going to start getting into the meat of things. So you've set the stage. You've talked about your role in this situation. Now we're going to talk about what you did.

Since we're getting into more relevant stuff, you can take more time to describe what you did. There's a caution for action. Don't go into too much technical deal or specifics of your past processes in a job here. Unless your interviewer is familiar with the technology, they're likely not going to understand all of what you're talking about if you go too deep. So keep it high level. Plus, going too deep can take a lot of time. You might start feeling like you're rambling here and you're giving just too much context and detail. That is unnecessary for the point.

Point is, what was the action in the conflict that you took? So if you're unsure how much detail to give, err on the side of less because you can always use the following phrase. I'm happy to describe in more detail if you're interested. You can also leave them wanting more and they'll ask for more detail if they need it. So for the same example, let's talk about the action. Instead of pushing back immediately, I scheduled a meeting with the sales director to better understand his concerns. I acknowledged his perspective and presented data from our past campaigns showing that digital marketing had generated 40% more qualified leads than traditional methods. However, I also recognized the value of personal engagement. So I proposed a hybrid approach.

We would allocate 70% of the budget to digital campaigns while while reserving 30% for targeted in person events and direct mail tailored to high value prospects to ensure that both of our teams were aligned. I coordinated a weekly check in where marketing and sales could share insights and adjust the strategy in real time. Alright, so that clearly showed the detail of what this marketing executive did in this conflict and the compromise that they made. So next we're going to talk about the result. This is the part where you really have to bring it home and make sure that you're connecting back to the core question. Describe the outcome and give any specific metrics that you can if it's appropriate for the question. Try and bring everything full circle and make sure you keep this concise like everything else. So the result for the marketing executive, this compromise resulted in a 25% increase in overall leads compared to the previous quarter.

The hybrid strategy allowed us to leverage the strength of both digital and traditional marketing and our sales team reported a 15% increase in conversions. Additionally, the collaboration improved team morale and it strengthened the working relationship between marketing and sales. On our next project, it was much easier to have those conversations and how we could get aligned on strategy. Now there's the second R, which is the reflection. This is two to three sentences and you're going to focus here on what did you learn about yourself and how you work and how you took that away to do better next time or reinforce that what you did this time worked and you would continue to employ that strategy when it comes to conflict. So here's a reflection in this case. This experience taught me the importance of active listening and compromise in cross functional collaboration. Instead of treating conflict as a roadblock, I learned to approach it as an opportunity to integrate diverse perspectives for a more effective strategy moving forward.

I always ensure early alignment between teams to avoid similar conflicts drive better business outcomes. And there you have it. Now I'm going to read this back and have it flow without pausing so that you can pick up each of the STARR pieces and you can see how it flows in a nice storytelling manner. So the interviewer asks, why don't you tell me about a time when you experience conflict at work? And remember, this is for a marketing executive. Here's the response. Sure, I'd love to tell you about a time when it was digital versus print with our marketing team and our sales team. So at my previous company, we were launching a major product campaign and our marketing team had developed a comprehensive strategy focused on digital channels. That was really where we saw marketing going.

However, our sales director strongly believed that a traditional offline approach, primarily events and direct mail, would be more effective. This disagreement created tension between the two teams as we were both convinced Our strategies would drive the best results. As the marketing executive leading the digital strategy, my role was to align our efforts with the company's growth objectives while ensuring collaboration between both teams. My challenge was to find a solution that addressed the concerns of both marketing and sales while delivering the best possible results for the company. So instead of pushing back immediately here when we had disalignment, I scheduled a meeting with the sales director to better understand his concerns. I acknowledged his perspective and presented data from our past campaigns showing that digital marketing had generated 40% more qualified leads than traditional methods. However, I also recognized the value of personal engagement. So I proposed a hybrid approach.

We would allocate 70% of the budget to digital campaigns while reserving 30% for targeted in person events and direct mail tailored to high value prospects. Now, to ensure both teams were aligned, I coordinated a weekly check in where marketing sales could share insights and adjust the strategy in real time. So the result of this compromise resulted in a 25% increase in overall leads compared to the previous quarter. The hybrid strategy allowed us to leverage the strengths of both digital and traditional marketing and our sales team reported a 15% increase in conversions. Additionally, the collaboration improved team morale and strengthened the working relationship between marketing and sales, which made it much easier to have these conversations later with more projects that we worked on together. And as I reflected on this experience, it really taught me the importance of active listening and compromise in cross functional collaboration. Instead of treating conflict as a roadblock, I learned to approach it as an opportunity to integrate diverse perspectives for a more effective strategy Moving forward. I always ensure early alignment between teams to avoid similar conflicts and to drive better business outcomes.

Did you see how that flowed? Now I am reading a script going over this. So you want to throw away the script and make it more conversational when it comes to your responses. But this is a really good start to practice, practice, practice and just remember some of the key components of each part of the acronym for STARR. Most likely because it's your own story, you're going to remember these things and you won't even need the script, you just need the format and the template kind of the framework behind it. So write down that framework and practice, practice, practice. But I do think that before you practice without your script, you should write out a script, make sure you've got the details that make sense here. This is a really good time to also use chat GPT to even give you examples or prompt you to help you remember stories. When it comes to popular interview questions, here's some interview questions that you can Prepare the STARR format for and by the way, these are the types of questions we're seeing in a modern job search.

So hint, hint, this is really good. And if the company tells you which questions to prepare for, make sure you're thoroughly doing that and that should be your number one focus. Anytime they give you hints and tell you what to do to prepare, believe them and go do it. All right, I already mentioned the conflict question, but here's some more interview questions Describe a time when you had to adapt to rapidly changing technology or industry trends. How did you keep your skills up to date and what was the outcome? Tell me a time when you disagreed with leadership and their approach to a challenge or their strategy. How did you handle this and what did you do? Can you provide an example of a project where you encountered a significant roadblock? How did you overcome it and what did you learn from the experience? Please share an example of a project where you had to collaborate with a cross functional team. What was your role and how did you contribute to the team's success? Tell me about a time when you had to work with a team member who had a different communication style or work approach. How did you adapt and what was the outcome? Describe a situation where you had to come up with a creative solution to meet a client's vision within budget constraints.

What steps did you take and what was the outcome? Alright, that's it for today. Go snag and swipe a copy of this guide so that you have something to start with and start typing out your responses to these questions in the STARR format. Set yourself up for success. Don't worry about any other formats out there. This is a great, tried and true method and like I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, some people will rate you on it, so you might as well just practice it and get really used to it. So remember, STARR stands for S situation, T task, A action, R result, and the second R reflection. I know you've got this. Let me know any questions you have, comments, etc.

You can email me anytime at support@hercareerstudio.com and I'm rooting for you. Happy hunting and I hope that interview converts to a job offer very soon.

Lisa Virtue:

Are you currently in the job search or looking to make a career transition? Her Career Studio has you covered.

Hi, this is Lisa Virtue, the career coach and the founder of Her Career Studio that is dedicated to bringing you free resources.

So head to Her Careerstudio.com and get your free cover letter template, the guide to how to write it and your free resume template. Keep it simple and use these tried and true resume templates that are also ATS friendly and in Google Docs so they're easy to edit and keep track of. This will build out your career story in writing so that you can get those interviews and ultimately land that ideal job.

You got this. Good luck and best wishes.