Basic rules

In different industries, the form and content of behavioral interview will be different, but some of the skills are used for all trades and all the issues.

There are some basic rules can be used in behavioral interviews, before we describes these rules, It is important to stress at the outset that: the purpose of any tips is let the interviewer to better understand you. Tips itself is important, but the most important thing is that you should understand the reasons why to use these tips, in order to bring the biggest benefits to you by using these tips reasonably.

First rule:  prepare the examples according to the company's culture and the job requirements
 
Every company is looking for the suitable job candidates. Where "suitable" means: your personality, quality and capacity are consistent with the company requirements and position qualifications. The culture determines what are the most important values in the company. For example, there are more requirements for fashion design ability and creative ability as a employee in L'OREAL, these requirements original from the company culture. Each position has its own characteristics that determine the qualification of this position is very different from other positions.

Listed below are some capacities required for common positions

Marketing department: creativity, ability to understand other people's perspectives, ability to handle conflict, capacity to deploy resources from different departments.

Sales department: ability to convince others, marketing capabilities.

Finance department: basic financial knowledge, integrity and pragmatic.

Thus, when you application for a department in some company, you need to prepare for the special characteristics required by this company, these issues are often intertwined in an interview.

Second rule: STAR strategies

What are STAR strategies? STAR is stands for Situation, Task, Action and Result, STAR strategies is very useful for providing examples in behavioral interview. These strategies provide you a structure which you could use to demonstrate your examples to the interviewer clearly and logically. Also these strategies could be used in a broad scope of applications, STAR strategies are some universal rules which allows you feel comfortable in an interview, so you should be well skilled using these rules. We described STAR strategies in detail below:

1.Situation

You should tell interviewer the situation you were faced with in the task that you needed to accomplish. This part need not to be explained very detailed, but should be explained clearly, especially the problem which you have encountered should be explained nicety, in order to let the interviewer understand how difficulties of the situation you have encountered, at the same time you should explain the constraints factor for resolve this problem. The information you have given could illustrate that the method you have used in the circumstances is the best one.

2. Task

You need to give a comprehensive description of your method that used for resolve the problem. The purpose of this part is to leave the interviewer with a general impression and clearly understand to what you have done.

3. Action

In this part, you need to describe the action you took, what kinds of difficulties you have encountered, and how to resolve the problem at last. Don't try to tell what you might do, but tell what you did. Generally the action part should be described in chronological order, so that let the interviewer review the situation together with you.

4. Result

Finally you should to talk about the results of the whole thing, what you have achieved, including the attainment of the objectives, and the feedback from the internal and external of the team at the end. Meanwhile you can highlight what you have learned from the whole thing, in which it is shown that you have the ability to keep learning from life.

Last update : 19-08-2007

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