♪ [music] ♪ - [Instructor] This is an important lesson because it's all about behavioral questions. Most companies include behavioral questions in the interview process. These are all those questions that start with "Tell me about a time, give me an example," and similar. This is where you can use your storytelling skills to stand out from the competition. You have to be prepared to show your accomplishments in the best possible light. That means crafting stories. True stories, of course. That show you at your best, that prove you're qualified for this job and demonstrate that you would be a pleasure to work with. It's really hard to come up with this kind of compelling story spontaneously in an interview. That's why a little preparation can make such a huge difference. By definition, behavioral questions are any questions that focus on your past behaviors as indicators of future performance. So the secret to doing well with these questions is all about storytelling. And why storytelling? We're much more likely to become engaged with information in the form of a story. People are also much more likely to respond to and remember information when it's presented in the form of a story. The other thing about storytelling that's relevant here is that stories engage the right brain, they trigger the imagination. And that makes a listener feel like a participant in the narrative. And that makes the interviewer much more likely to connect with you, to feel interested in you. So let's get into some of the best practices for writing these compelling interview stories. The S.T.A.R. approach has been used for years in many industries to analyze behavioral answers from candidates. And it's also a useful way to think about structuring your answers as well. S.T.A.R. stands for situation, task, approach, and results. These are the elements that we want to cover in each and every story. Years ago, I started using S.T.A.R. with my interview coaching clients, and it works like a charm to simplify and focus a narrative. I've used S.T.A.R. with thousands of clients at this point. People come back time and again, telling me about how much more confident they felt and how much better they performed once they had those S.T.A.R. stories. It takes a little planning. Most interview examples are not naturally bite-size, concise stories that you can deliver in one to two minutes. Often, you're talking about a complex project that went on for weeks or even months. So how do you know which details to mention, which details to leave out, what order to put them in? That's where S.T.A.R. comes in. The Big Interview Answer Builder will help guide you through the process of creating your S.T.A.R. stories. Check it out after you learn the best practices in this lesson so you can put the learning into practice. The first step in developing these brilliant S.T.A.R. interview stories is to figure out what experiences from your past are going to make the best stories. I find that the best approach is to start with your greatest hits. If you try to come up with a story for every possible behavioral question out there, you'll get overwhelmed quickly. Instead, focus first on your best stories, as these can typically be used for a variety of different questions. If you get stuck, start by listing your proudest professional accomplishments. Think of those projects where you really excelled. Maybe a situation that led to a promotion. Anytime you tackled a really difficult task and succeeded, like a negotiation, or resolving an important customer issue, or making a tough decision. Choose the stories that feature your greatest accomplishments. Because each of those impressive stories, they'll likely demonstrate multiple competencies. Think about that project that required leadership, and communication skills, problem-solving, and attention to detail. That story can be adapted for different behavioral questions. Once you've got your greatest hits stories identified, you'll also want to think about how they align with the competencies required for the job at hand. The job description will help you with this. If innovation is in the job description, of course, you want to make sure you have a story prepared that showcases your ability to innovate. If none of your greatest hits stories seems to be a fit, you'll want to bring some other projects that were more innovative. Once you have a list of stories to develop, it's time to sit down and flush them out using that simple S.T.A.R. format. Naturally, we're going to start with part one, S.T., which stands for situation and task. The idea here is to give the interviewer some context, some background, just what they need to know to make the rest of the story makes sense. Resist the temptation to go into too much detail here. Just enough to clarify your role and ensure understanding of the difficulty, complexity, and/or size of the challenge. This is important. The first part is just drawing them in and providing a foundation, so the rest of the story makes sense. What were you trying to achieve and why? Now let's talk about A, approach, part two of our story. Here's where we describe the actions that you took to complete the task, solve the problem, address the issue, improve the situation. Why did you do what you did? What was the strategy behind it? This will help show what you're like on the job, how you approach things, and how you think. You'll want to mention relevant skills used and competencies demonstrated, because this can really help to underline your abilities and your strengths. Tell them about the strengths you showed. Don't be too modest to spell it out. Just remember to stay focused on key details, and avoid going off on tangents. Next, it's time for the very important final part, your results. Every good story has a happy ending. You need to emphasize a positive outcome for your story. Not only to show that you're results-driven, but also to end in a nice, crisp, confident way. First, be sure to mention any tangible results. That could be revenue generated, cost reduced, time saved, promotion earned, client won, client saved. Anything you can talk about that's tangible. Interviewers love hard numbers, hard facts, but you can also talk about anecdotal results. Not every story comes with measurable results. You can also impress them by citing positive feedback from your manager, or the client, or the CEO. You can talk about general improvement. Even if you can't quantify it, you can talk about experience gained, skills learned, relationships improved. So many of my clients find that they have been selling themselves short on the R. Maybe it's modesty or the challenge of coming up with stories on the fly. However, outlining your stories, and especially defining your R will help you make sure you're highlighting your experience and your accomplishments to your best advantage. Once you've defined your S.T.A.R., you're not quite done yet. The next step is to define which competencies were demonstrated in each example. This will help you categorize your stories and know when to use which examples. I'm a big believer that you should have stories that are multipurpose, but you have to know which stories are the best fits for each competency area. Now, let's look at a sample interview story that uses the S.T.A.R. format. This should help you see how it all fits together, and how you can create similar stories about your own experiences. One note here, when you're creating your story, there's no need for you to write out exactly what you would say. Your written version is going to be more of a rough set of bullet points. Then, as you practice, you'll start to find your rhythm and put it all together in a way that feels natural. On to the example. ♪ [music] ♪ - [Candidate] In my current role as an assistant account manager, I support my boss on our company's biggest corporate account, which brought in two million in revenue this year. Recently, my boss was traveling, and I got a frantic call from Ray, our client contact, that he was not able to log into our systems to run reports that he needed by the end of the day. Now, this was a Friday at 3:00 p.m, and my boss was on a plane to London. Ray was very upset when he heard that my boss was not available, and I knew I had to figure out a way to help him or things could get ugly. ♪ [music] ♪ - This situation description jumps right into the action. We're not going into a lot of detail about who Ray was, the history of the system, nothing that's not relevant. Another good thing about this story is that it's got some nice urgency and drama. If you can inject that into your stories, that's going to help you keep their attention. Now on to A, approach. ♪ [music] ♪ - The first thing I did was apologize to Ray about the inconvenience. I gave him a chance to vent a bit and reassured him that I would do whatever was humanly possible to resolve the problem for him. I called our help desk, but the technician told me that the issue would have to go into the queue, and she was very busy. So I decided to go wait outside the office of our customer support director, the technicians boss, until he could see me. I explained the situation and expressed how important it was for us to find a solution as soon as possible for our number one client. ♪ [music] ♪ - Why we like it. This is a pretty good overview of what the candidate did, and why, focusing on skills demonstrated. First, client communication skills, then sense of urgency, proactive problem solving, and persistence. Finally, taking the lead while the boss was away, and a focus on getting things done. Good stuff. Now, on to the results of our story. ♪ [music] ♪ - I then set up a conference call with Ray and our customer support director. Working together, we were able to identify the cause of the problem which was related to raise company security settings. We adjusted the settings right there while we were on the phone, and Ray was then able to run his report and meet his deadline. Later that day, Ray sent an email praising me for my quick response, cc-ing my boss, and the CEO of our company. Ray said I saved the day for him with my persistence and excellent customer service skills. Our CEO called me to congratulate me on my quick thinking and tell me to keep up the good work. ♪ [music] ♪ - Lots of good stuff here. We solved the problem, the client was happy. We're actually quoting the client here. This is a great trick if you're someone who is more humble by nature, and you have a hard time saying great things about yourself. Quote other people saying them. To me, this story presents this candidate as someone who's a strong fit for a job that requires customer service, communication, problem-solving, quick thinking, being proactive, lots of competencies here. So that gives you a good idea of what a good S.T.A.R. story can do for you. A great interview story is going to showcase your strengths, a little bit of your personality, and also help you establish rapport with the interviewer. So now that you've seen the S.T.A.R. format in action, I'm sure your mind is racing, thinking of all the great examples that you can plug into this framework and prepare for your next interview. The Big Interview Answer Builder will walk you right through and help you generate those stories. If you want more on how to approach specific types of behavioral questions, check out our mastery track curriculum for lessons on how to answer questions about leadership, teamwork, failure, and several other in-demand competencies. You'll also find lots of additional examples of good behavioral stories on Big Interview if you need more inspiration to get started. And don't forget. Once you finalize your stories, it's time to practice. Telling the story out loud is an important final component to help you get comfortable so you'll be sure to remember your key points, preparation and practice, the two key components to acing behavioral questions.
