- Congratulations, you've made it to the interview stage. Through a series of behavioral interview questions, the hiring manager is looking to find out more about how you work and resolve challenges in the workplace. The interview is a great opportunity to demonstrate and expand on your skills, personality, and appetite for the role. While behavioral interview questions don't necessarily have right or wrong answers, there is a method you can use to give better responses. We call this, the STAR method, and this is how you can use it in an interview. 

Situation, to clearly set the context, state the role, the organizational department where you were working, and provide a brief description of the situation where you demonstrated the capability. Tasks, provide a brief description of the tasks that you were required to undertake to address the situation. Action, describing the actions that you took to resolve the situation is the most important part of your answer. It's very important that you pick a work example where your actions align with the key behaviors being assessed. Results, a really strong workplace example should finish with a great achievement statement. An achievement statement provides the evidence that your actions were effective and should include the outcome. 

Let's look at how you can use the STAR method to answer a typical behavioral interview question. 

Could you give me an example of when you had to deliver a solution to an existing problem? 

- I was working within the recruitment team to address a backlog of candidates in our recruitment software. The backlog was slowing down our system and becoming problematic, especially when entering new candidates. I started by closing off old job positions, then I realized the main reason for backlog was managers not closing off the job properly. I knew that even with a new system, the backlog would continue if the staff weren't properly trained. I knew I had to come up with a new approach to this problem. 

Despite my limited experience in compliance, I used my background in training and coaching to help the staff understand the importance of knowing how to use the system properly. Initially, it was unclear which parts of the software they were having problems with. This is when I asked the HR manager for feedback, and I interviewed the staff to find out what parts they were struggling with. 

Based on their feedback, I wrote a training program, wrote a new training guide, recorded a webinar, and created a checklist which I published on the internet for easy access. As a result of my initiative, the backlog became less of a problem as staff were properly trained on how to use the software. In the long term, there were fewer errors in the system, and the HR received fewer queries regarding the software. 

- Now that you understand what a good response looks like, we will run through a poor response. 

Could you give me an example of when you had to deliver a solution to an existing problem? 

- My team had to fix some problems in our recruitment software. There was so much old data in there. It was really slow and kept clogging up. It made my job really difficult. 

We worked on clearing the backlog of candidates, but then we realized the staff weren't properly trained on the software. We created some training materials, so hopefully this backlog wouldn't happen again. We thought about every step involved. We used Word to type up a document. We used Adobe Connect and recorded to a webinar. 

We shared our training materials online and got our staff to help us clear the backlog. We haven't had a backlog as bad as this one since we did it. 

- This is a poor response because there aren't enough details to demonstrate the complexity of the task. The candidate also repeatedly used the pronoun we instead of I, which makes it really difficult to understand what they actually did. The resolution was also unclear, and no concrete results were evident. 

Remember to give the best response, take your time to explain through the situation, task, action, and results of your achievements. By explaining the crucial part you played through each stage, you will be able to illustrate how you think, behave, and communicate to the interviewer. Good luck. 

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