STAR in practice

You’ve looked at the job description and you can see that teamwork is a big part of the job. So, you need to plan a good STAR example around teamwork and how you demonstrate this.

But remember, questions asked may be more subtle than “tell me about a time you worked in a team and how you demonstrated good teamwork”. Questions may be disguised, so you might be asked questions like:

• How do you work in a team?
• How do you manage conflict?
• How do you get on with others?
• If I asked your colleagues, what would they say about you?

If you have your teamwork example ready, you could answer any of these questions quite easily.

You can steer an answer towards something that shows your strengths, but don’t stretch this too far- always ensure your answer is relevant.

Here’s a practical example of using STAR to answer an interview question, and how not to do it.

A good STAR example – How do you work in a team?

“In my current role of [X] I was recently chosen to lead a team to improve customer service in my department as we were receiving a lot of rejects and complaints.

I decided it would be good to have a cross section of roles and seniority on the team, so I asked for volunteers and got a good mix of people. I encouraged one person to join the team, as although they were normally quite shy, I knew they had some really good ideas to contribute. I used a facilitative leadership style as I was keen to draw on people’s practical experience and encourage ideas. I used an agile project approach and we piloted some of the ideas. I used some statistical analysis tools to pinpoint the source of the errors. My role was to bring the right people together and facilitate a process that drew on people’s strengths.

We were able to adopt new ways of dealing with customer complaints that reduced the average response time by 25%, and reduced rejection rates to the lowest ever. And I commissioned a customer satisfaction survey which showed a rating increase of 10 percentage points than before the project.

A bad (non-STAR) example - How do you work in a team?

“Yes, I agree that teamwork is very important, it makes such a difference to how people are feeling at work, and I think that the best way to do this, well what I do, is I like to spend time with my staff understanding what they are like, what they don’t like what their family life is. In fact, Casey in my team was telling me the other day that they didn’t have their mind on the job because their partner wasn’t well at home, and I sympathised with them and they seemed a bit happier, and anyway yes teamwork, so… I think I am a really good team worker like I said, I try to understand people and what their strengths and weaknesses are, and I really try to get the best out of everyone, and I’ve always worked in teams, and I think I get on well with everyone. Well, I’ve never had any complaints, and yes that’s it really. It’s about people and getting on with everyone and being able to work with different people regardless of their job title or grade. And I think I do that really well.”

This is a poor example because it is weak, vague, and waffly. It is talking in generalities and opinions rather than backed up by facts or solid examples.

The example given of talking to Casey could be turned into a more solid STAR example if more detail was given about what you did. It talks about what you might do rather than what you have actually done. It contains vague statements that can’t be proven and don’t tell the interviewer anything meaningful about the you - it is a missed opportunity.