You need to prepare STARs
for the competencies listed in job description you need to have examples up your sleeve of where you’ve demonstrated them
STAR stands for:
Situation- very brief background, your role at time , what led up to it
TASK- what specifically was your task or job or objective …again keep brief with only essential facts to get interviewers in line with what your task was
ACTION. : what did you “I” actually do, when, why, how, what made you choose that course of action, how much did you initiate vs told to do. Don’t talk about “ we” , just you personally. You need enough detail to get over to them how you have behaved on past and why so they can use as predictor of future
RESULTS: probably most important bit…what did your organisation gain from what you did ( can be financial, process improvements, or could be improving “customer” or other stakeholders experience etc). And also what did you gain from it?
STARs can also relate to things that didn’t go so well…results will focus on what you learnt from that, how you’ve improved etc
STARS or competency based interview questions will often start with stuff like “ can you tell me about a time when”. They focus on what has happened before rather than questions like “. How would you handle x, y, z” which frankly doesn’t tell them anything as we can all say how we would do stuff in future by making it up and being perfect, even when we have no experience of that scenario .
The great thing with preparing STARs, is that even when you have an interviewer who is vague, crap and asking open need questions, you can always answer with a “ let me answer you by giving you an example of when this happened” and launch into your STAR. it is extremely impactful and powerful and gives you the opportunity to tell them exactly what you can do
preparing STARs takes some time and effort. Ideally, as you go through your career you build up your bank of STARs for all significant competencies. You may also have STARs related to stuff outside work- for example university, volunteering, family related stuff especially as a mum as we acquire so many competencies in being mums.
To get you going at this short notice, go through all info about job and it’s requirements- underline all the competencies it’s mentioning ( eg teamwork, numeracy, good with it systems, creative etc etc) and think about 1-2 STARs minimum for each. Write these down, practice saying them out loud . Remember time should be spent on the AR bit, not ST bit. It’s fine to use the same example ST for a couple of different competences- you just need to focus the AR a bit differently to bring out the competency they’re asking about.
in addition, let your passion shine through. Don’t sit like a robot and patter out your answers. Show you care about doing that job, why, and what you’re like when your excited and enthusiastic
good luck