STAR

Good day! Through the advice of my mentor, I will no longer be briefly describing STAR in my project portfolio blogs. Instead, I will have this page linked —so that if you need a refresher—you can visit.

What is STAR? “A star is a luminous sphere of plasma held together by its own gravity.” (1)

No, not that one.

STAR is an acronym that is structured to assist an interviewee answer behavioral questions asked by the interviewer. What the interviewer is wanting to discover is how you handled certain situations. Typically, these situations are what you would encounter in the role you are interviewing for.  More than likely the statement would start off “Tell me about a time…” To be clear and concise. you should answer in a methodical way–STAR.

• Describe the Situation,
•  the high-level Task(s) that needed to occur,
• the Action(s) you took, and
• the Result(s) that were achieved.

A lot of times, tasks and actions have cross-over. For the results, if you can include hard data like “80% reduction in work effort”, this is a huge win. If you are not already, start tracking this kind of information when you go into a project or improvement situation, especially the metrics.

After understanding this more, I really like the structured way of describing situations. So, I am taking that over to create my project portfolio. These entries will go into much detail than I would in an actual interview. One of my goals is to describe the project to you, what I did, the lessons I learned, and how you could possibly apply that to your situation. However, at the end will be a synopsis of how the same can be quickly described for an interview.

My goal is for these to be helpful to you. So if you have suggestions or questions, feel free to comment.

Thank you for your time,