These questions are often put to every candidate so that the interviewer can compare each of their answers to the same questions. These questions are therefore more objective and less likely to be influenced by bias.

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They might start with phrases like

‘Tell me about a time when….’ Or

‘What would you do if…’

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This sort of question is harder to answer, and it’s easy to give an unstructured answer and miss out key operational details. This is where it’s helpful to know the STAR technique.

Situation – what’s the background?

Task – what you needed to do

Activity – how did you achieve it?

Result - what happened in the end

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Here is an example answer to the question ‘Tell me about a situation where you had to solve a problem in an inventive way.’

Situation – Set the context of the example that you are going to give. Example, we have a training meeting organised and on the day the training room was flooded so we couldn’t use it.

Task. What was required of you. Example – it was my job to try to find a way to hold the meeting as we had paid for the trainer already.

Activity. What you did to solve the issue. Example – there is a café next door so I asked if we could take up a corner for the training session, and in return we would purchase the refreshments for the meeting from the café.

Result. How well the situation played out. Example – the training meeting went ahead, so we saved having to pay twice for the trainer. Plus the café have agreed to allow us to use them as a backup venue.

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Another example is a question regarding customer service – ‘Give an example where you had to sort an issue after a customer complaint’ As a recruiter, a good example might be:

Situation – A worker has not shown for a role – the client called as the job was critical to his business

Task. I needed to get the worker to the client or replace him.

Activity. I called the worker who had overslept. I told him to get ready, called the client to explain the situation and then collected the worker in my car and delivered him. All in less time than it would have taken to source a replacement.

Result. The job was done in time and our relationship with the client wasn’t damaged.

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Before you go to your interview, try making up some competency based questions and practice answering them using the STAR technique. It will help you feel much more confident at the interview and will assist you to give more comprehensive answers.