How to answer job interview questions using the STAR technique

Many of the candidates and hiring managers we work with are not trained in doing job interviews. They are driven by their job content: funding, risk management or optimal cash management solutions. Having nice and knowledgeable colleagues for them can be great, but the process of finding new ones is not so much. If treasurers get together, more often than not talks will be about treasury techniques. But there is so much more in life!

Internal recruiters, HR managers and CFOs are not driven by your treasury job content. They think about having enough and the right staff, about profitability or about strategy. Finding the right treasury staff is, also for them, one of their many tasks. The vocabulary they will use in their meeting with a treasurer, especially the HR specialists, will contain competences. A competency is a set of defined behaviours that provide a structured guide enabling the identification, evaluation and development of the behaviours in individual employees (Wikipedia). Examples of competences are: communication skills, leadership and commercial awareness. It can be useful to think about your competences, the ones needed for your current or ideal next position. Especially with the following in mind.

Many recruiters will structure their interviews around the competences they are looking for, the ones they defined from the corporate strategy and input from the hiring manager. Their assumption is that past behaviour predicts future behaviour. An often-used technique to measure competences in an interview is the so-called STAR technique. Interviewers will look for a Situation from your past in which you had a certain Task. What were your Actions and to what Result did this lead? One can recognize these interview types because recruiters will ask questions like: Can you describe a situation in which you could show your leadership skills/result orientation/ability to cooperate? The internet is full of information about this topic, see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nN7Q7DrI6Q

We hope with this in mind you will have another way of looking at your job and be better prepared for your next job interview. Preferably with our clients or candidates