You're Doing STAR Format Answers Wrong. Here's How to Do It the Right Way

If you've been preparing for job interviews, you've likely encountered the STAR format. It's a powerful tool for structuring responses to behavioral questions.

However, many candidates use this technique the wrong way, resulting in weak, unconvincing answers.

This article will show you how to avoid common pitfalls and craft compelling STAR responses that will impress your interviewers.

In every article where I take an example to explain the STAR format answers, I try to adopt a different persona. In this article, I will use the persona of a Cloud Solutions Architect.

⭐️ What is the STAR Format?

Before we dive into the mistakes, let's have a quick refresher of what STAR stands for:

• Situation: The context or background of your example

• Task: The specific challenge or responsibility you faced

• Action: The steps you took to address the task

• Result: The outcomes of your actions

Now, let's examine each component, identify common mistakes, and learn how to do it right.

☀️ Situation: Stop Being Vague

The Situation sets the stage for your story. It provides the context and background information necessary for the interviewer to understand the circumstances you were facing. When describing the situation, be specific about:

• Where you were working and what your role was

• When the event occurred

• Relevant data/metrics to showcase the importance of the situation

🚫 The Wrong Way:

"I was working as a Cloud Solutions Architect, and we had to move our mission-critical workloads to the cloud."

This situation lacks specificity and fails to set the stage effectively. It doesn't give the interviewer any meaningful context.

✅ The Right Way:

"I was working as a Senior Cloud Solutions Architect with a Fortune 500 manufacturing company. In Q1 2023, 80% of our mission-critical applications were running on aging on-premises infrastructure, causing frequent outages and limiting our ability to scale. Our CIO had set an aggressive goal to migrate 50% of these applications to the cloud within six months to improve reliability and reduce operational costs."

💪 Why It's Better:

• Specifies the exact role and company

• Provides a clear timeframe

• Offers relevant details and includes additional context that highlights the importance of the situation

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🔧 Task: Don't Undersell the Challenge

The Task describes the specific challenge, problem, or responsibility you were facing in the given situation. This component should clearly outline:

• What you needed to accomplish

• The goals or objectives you were working towards

• The urgency or importance of the task

⛔️ The Wrong Way:

"The task was to figure out how to move the applications to AWS within the given timeframe and make sure they worked properly."

This description undersells the complexity of the task and fails to convey its importance or urgency.

✅ The Right Way:

“The task was to identity, prioritize and migrate critical applications to AWS within six months. This required assessing applications, designing a secure architecture, creating a migration plan, minimizing operational disruptions, ensuring high uptime, and reducing costs. The timelines were aggressive, as the urgency was high because our aging infrastructure was putting us at risk of major system failures.”

💪Why It's Better:

• Breaks down the task into key components

• Emphasizes the urgency and importance of the task

• Demonstrates the scope and complexity of the challenge

🎤 Action: Get Specific and Show Your Expertise

The Action is the core of your response. It details the steps you took to address the task or challenge. When describing your actions:

• Be specific about what you did. Use "I" statements to clarify your personal contributions.

• Explain your thought process and decision-making

• Highlight any skills or qualities you demonstrated

⛔️ The Wrong Way:

"I looked at our applications and decided to start the migration with our core ERP system as it was most critical. Then I set up the AWS accounts and worked with security, database, networking and other team to migrate the application. We had to make some applications architecture changes to make the apps work in the cloud."

This description is bit vague, lacks detail, and fails to showcase any particular skills or expertise.

✅ The Right Way:

“To begin, I led a cross-functional team in conducting a thorough analysis of our application portfolio. We considered factors such as business criticality, dependencies, and architectural complexity to gain a complete understanding of our existing infrastructure.

Based on this assessment, I took the ownership to lead the migration of our core ERP system, which was critical to our manufacturing operations. This migration was also crucial to the overall goal as it would serve as a blueprint for future migrations.

I designed a multi-tiered AWS architecture for this application, ensuring high availability and scalability. Security was a top priority, so I collaborated closely with our security team to implement a robust model tailored to the ERP system's requirements. I worked with project manager to create a comprehensive project plan, including a phased approach to migrate different modules of the ERP system.

To streamline the migration process and reduce manual errors, I developed CloudFormation templates and leveraged AWS Migration Hub for automation. This significantly reduced migration time and improved consistency. Throughout the process, I worked closely with our database team to ensure data integrity and with our networking team to establish secure connectivity between our on-premises systems and AWS.

Additionally, I conducted several dry runs and extensive testing to minimize potential disruptions to our manufacturing operations.”

💪 Why It's Better:

• Provides specific, detailed actions and uses "I" statements to emphasize personal contribution

• Explains the rationale behind each action

• Demonstrates technical expertise, strategic planning, and leadership skills

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⛳️ Result: Quantify Your Impact

The Result is the conclusion of your story. It describes the outcomes of your actions and their impact. When discussing results:

• Be specific about what was achieved using quantifiable metrics when possible

• Explain the positive impact on the company, team, or project

• Mention any lessons learned or personal growth

⛔️ The Wrong Way:

"We managed to move few applications to the cloud within the 6 months. The application are working better in the cloud and we overall reduced the cost of infrastructure of running these applications."

This result lacks specificity and fails to demonstrate any significant impact or value.

✅ The Right Way:

"We successfully migrated our core ERP system to AWS in four months. The system's response times decreased by 40%, and we improved scalability, handling a 200% increase in concurrent users during peak periods. We also reduced infrastructure costs for this application by 30%.

It took us more time than anticipated but we learned a lot along the way. Based on the learnings, I created a blueprint, best practices document and SOP for other teams to migrate their respective applications. Using these documents, different teams have migrated 24 more applications so far.

Personally, this project deepened my expertise in large-scale cloud migrations and gave me opportunity to work with multiple stakeholders and cross-functional teams."

💪 Why It's Better:

• Provides specific, quantifiable achievements

• Explains the positive impact on various aspects of the business

• Highlights personal growth

🎯 Quick Recap

While drafting your answers in STAR format, remember following high level thumb rules:

• Situation - Stop Being Vague

• Task - Don't Undersell the Challenge

• Action - Get Specific and Show Your Expertise

• Result - Quantify Your Impact

Here is the checklist of what your STAR format answers should clearly outline:

• Situation

  ☑ Where you were working and what your role was

  ☑ When the event occurred

  ☑ Relevant data/metrics to showcase the importance of the situation

• Task

  ☑ What you needed to accomplish

  ☑ The goals or objectives you were working towards

  ☑ The urgency or importance of the task

• Action

  ☑ Be specific about what you did. Use "I" statements to clarify your personal contributions.

  ☑ Explain your thought process and decision-making

  ☑ Highlight any skills or qualities you demonstrated

• Result

  ☑ Be specific about what was achieved using quantifiable metrics when possible

  ☑ Explain the positive impact on the company, team, or project

  ☑ Mention any lessons learned or personal growth

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