Result, Situation, Action #

The STAR format of answering an interview question is very popular. But in my experience a twist on that ends up being more effective: result, situation, then action.

The STAR format kind of buries the lead - it forces the interviewer into a long-winded story and they’re not engaged because they don’t understand the value of it. By giving them some idea of the impact that your story had (e.g. I saved the company $XXX dollars, we reduced developer wait times by 20 minutes on a 1-hour task), that gives the interviewer a reason to listen.

In addition, I find the “task” part of the story tends to be extraneous - when you only have 30 minutes to an hour with the interviewer total, you need to shave the minutes where it matters.

Although the whole “my task was X” may take 1 minute to explain, it’s better to just explain what you did.

Example #

Result: I increased revenue for the company by XX percent.

Situation: In multiple customer meetings, I noticed that in the follow-up of customers meetings, they would always mention having trouble onboarding onto feature X.

Action: I wrote up a user guide, and we added a link the first time a customer accessed the feature, as well as included it in the onboarding guide.

Summary #

I call this “RSA” pronounced “rizza”. Try it out!