Want a better paying job?

There’s an acronym that might help: STAR…

It’s an interview technique from the 1970s that might help you get hired.

STAR is intended for behavioral interviews, which are interviews in which the company wants to see how you think.

Example behavior interview questions would be questions like: Tell me about a time you had an unexpected setback at work. Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone on your team. Tell me about a time you had to work with a difficult client.

What makes these interview questions tough is they force you to tell a story succinctly. So even if you have a good response or the right experience, you have to organize and sequence your answer such that your story is easy to follow. The goal is to walk the interviewer through how you think.

That’s where STAR comes in.

S is situation, you’re setting the scene. T is task at hand. A is action, it’s what you did and how you did it. R is the result, it’s the outcome.

So if the ice cream machine’s broken at work, you have to get the ice cream machine fixed. You’re gonna share what you thought through and then what you did, and then you share the outcome.

The outcome matters less than you think. Like, if the owner refused to call a mechanic to fix the ice cream machine, nothing you can do about that outcome. The interviewer just wants to understand how you thought and behaved in that situation. This gives them cues on how you’ll think and behave if they hire you.

The STAR method helps you give an interviewer information quickly and well.

Are there other interview tips that have helped you land a job? Share em in the comments below.

My name is Nick, I’m a finance columnist and author, you can follow for more videos like this and pre-order my book Money Proud in the link in bio.