Last week in our job interview series, we talked about behavioral interview questions, which ask about your past experiences in the workplace. This week, we’re discussing situational interview questions, which are questions about hypothetical future situations.
These types of questions help an interviewer better understand what you might do or how you might react under specific circumstances or to certain events. Rather than “tell me about a time when…”, these questions are structured as “what would you do if…”
Some examples of situational interview questions are:
- You’re assigned an important project but have to work on it with a difficult team member. What do you do?
- How would you deal with an upset or angry customer?
- You’ve been assigned a task that you haven’t done before. How would you approach your task?
These questions present an opportunity for you to speak about both your technical and workplace skills side-by-side in your answer.
How might you do that? Luckily, there’s a pretty straightforward formula you can use to craft your response: the STAR method.
How to use the STAR method
You can use the STAR method to respond to behavioral or situational interview questions, but it can work particularly well for situational interview questions because it offers a comprehensive structure that may be lacking when you’re dealing with hypotheticals.
STAR stands for:
- Situation: The scenario
- Task: Your role in the scenario
- Action: How you’d respond
- Result: The impact that response would make
Say you’re in an interview and someone asks you, “What would you do if you realized you’d made a mistake that will impact a project’s deadline?” First, take a breath. Next, begin working through the STAR method.
If I were working on a project and realized that I’d made a crucial mistake that would impact the deadline [situation], I’d need to work toward fixing my mistake and figure out what can be done to either still meet or adjust my deadline [task]. My first step would be to tell my manager, as well as any other teammates or stakeholders who may be impacted by my mistake [action]. Then, I’d assess the damage of my mistake. If it can be easily and quickly fixed, I’d make the necessary adjustments to avoid further damage. If it requires more work to fix, I’d develop a plan of action to fix the mistake [more action]. Next, I’d revisit our project timeline to figure out a way to still meet our overall project deadline and compile my proposed adjustments [more action]. Finally, I’d reconnect with my manager, teammates, and stakeholders with an update on my solution and timeline [more action]. This way, I can take responsibility for my mistake, make the necessary corrections, incorporate those corrections into our project timeframe, and control any further damage my mistake may have caused to my teammates’ workflow [result].
Keep practicing
Although you can’t be certain which questions an interviewer will ask you, practicing how you’ll respond to common interview questions can help you think deeply about your skills and how you’d like to present them.
For an interview crash course, try Big Interview’s The Art of the Job Interview. In about 19 hours, you’ll explore interview fundamentals and practice forming answers to common questions.
For career-specific practice, check out IBM’s Career Guide and Interview Preparation courses for Tech Support, Software Developer, Data Analyst, Data Scientist, and Data Engineering. Each of these courses takes about 10 hours to complete and will offer role-specific tips.
If you have any more questions about interview preparation, ask us in the comments. Next week, we’ll close out this interview series with an issue on questions to ask at the end of an interview. See you then!