How to Use the STAR Method to Ace Your Job Interview

Don Hutson, Chief Talent Officer at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare system: So, I'm going to share some information with you. I believe everybody on this call is a superstar and nd you do a very important work in healthcare and you take care of people, and you save people lives and you make their life better because of what you've committed your life to be and what I want to do is teach you something that I teach my own daughter and I teach anybody else on how to be a superstar when you do an interview, because as it's been said already, what people want to know is we believe that past behavior predicts future behavior.

So, the reason people ask behavior-based interview questions is they want to know, what did you do in the past that made you successful?and does that predict what you'll do in the future that will make you successful? So, what I want to do is to teach you a format, give you a format for how to tell a story because the people who tell the best story get the best opportunities and so, I use this format my whole life.

When somebody asks me, a behavioral-based question, I try to think of a situation or a task that I was given. Maybe it was a situation I was in. So, somebody mentioned about a conflict. So, think about a time when I was in conflict with one of my coworkers.

What did I do or say?

What actions did I take to navigate through that situation. and ultimately, what result did I get when I did those things So maybe the conflict got better, or we began to understand each other in a way we didn't before or we realized that the conflict wasn't about each other.

The conflict was about a limited resource that we were both trying to get access to. So, we solved the problem on how to share that resource and so, you want to be able to tell your story, use this format because this will help. Like Allyson said, people want to know the whole picture and not have to keep asking follow up questions to get to the answer.

So, the best way to give them that total picture is to do it in this STAR format. Describe the Situation or Task. Maybe we want to know if you're a great advocate for the patient, talk about a time when you thought the physician was maybe not doing the right thing for the patient or some other care team member might not have been doing the right thing for the patient.

What did you do or say to advocate for the patient and that's your action, right.

And then what result occurred?

The patient got better or the results?

The thing you are measuring, the equipment you are using registered a better result and ultimately the patient was very grateful for what you did in that moment. So again, tell that whole story and then you'll be a superstar in the interview.