Interview guide

The STAR method for job interviews

The STAR method helps you answer questions about specific situations clearly and convincingly. In four steps you explain what happened, what your task was, what you did and what came out of it.

5 min read · Updated September 2026

When you need the STAR method

Many interview questions start with “Tell me about a time when …” or “Give me an example of …”. Recruiters call these behavioural questions.

The idea behind them is simple. How you acted in the past says a lot about how you will act in the new role. Structured interviews with questions like these predict job performance better than almost any other selection method (Sackett et al., 2022).

Without structure, many answers get lost in the background story. STAR keeps you on track and makes sure your contribution and your result come across clearly.

The four steps

Situation

about 10% of your answer

Where and when did it happen? Two or three sentences of context are enough.
Task

about 10% of your answer

What was your responsibility or goal? One sentence is often enough.
Action

about 60% of your answer

What exactly did you do? Speak in the first person and describe the individual steps. This is the heart of your answer.
Result

about 20% of your answer

What came out of it? Give numbers if you can, and say briefly what you learned.

The whole answer takes about 90 seconds to two minutes. If the interviewer wants more detail, they will ask.

Two complete examples

Maintenance technician “Tell me about a time you had to work under a lot of time pressure.”

S: Last winter, the refrigeration system at one of our clients, a food producer, broke down on a Friday afternoon. Without cooling, goods worth around 80,000 euros would have spoiled.
T: I was on call that day and the only technician nearby.
A: I first read out the error messages and found a faulty compressor. The spare part could only be delivered on Monday. So I arranged two mobile cooling units with the client and moved the goods into the cold rooms that still worked. At the same time I informed my team leader and scheduled the replacement for early Monday.
R: No goods spoiled, and the system was running again at 10 am on Monday. Since then we check the compressors at every service visit for this client, and the client renewed their maintenance contract.

Accounting “Tell me about a mistake you made.”

S: In my first year in accounting, I booked a supplier invoice twice during the month-end closing.
T: I was responsible for accounts payable and had to find the error before the closing went to management.
A: I noticed the difference while reconciling the bank statements. I told my manager straight away, reversed the booking and checked every invoice of the month against the purchase order numbers again. Afterwards I suggested setting up a warning in the system for duplicate invoice numbers.
R: The closing went out on time. The warning has been active ever since and prevented eleven duplicate bookings in its first year. I learned to raise irregularities openly and immediately.

With a mistake, the last sentence matters most. Recruiters want to see that you take responsibility and learn from it.

What would you do if …?

Some questions describe an imagined situation, for example “What would you do if an important client wanted to change everything just before the deadline?”. There is no result to tell yet.

Describe step by step how you would approach it, and briefly explain each decision. If you have experienced something similar, follow up with a short STAR example. That turns an intention into evidence.

Your five stories

Five well-prepared stories cover almost every behavioural question.

Story	Fits questions about
A success you are proud of	your greatest achievement, your strengths, initiative
A mistake and what you did about it	mistakes, weaknesses, handling criticism
A conflict you resolved	conflict, teamwork, difficult clients
A situation under time pressure	stress, priorities, resilience
An improvement you started	motivation, change, responsibility

Write four bullet points for each story, one per step. Practise them out loud until you can tell them freely.

Typical questions to practise

Tell me about a time you had to make a difficult decision.
Describe a conflict with a colleague and how you resolved it.
Give me an example of a problem you solved on your own.
Tell me about a project that did not go to plan.
When did you win over a client who was unhappy at first?
Describe a situation where you had to prioritise several tasks at once.
Tell me about a time you had to learn something new very quickly.
When did you take responsibility for something that was not your job?

Common mistakes

Too much “we”. The interviewer wants to know what you contributed yourself. Say “I” when it was you.
Too much background. If the situation takes longer than your action, shorten it.
No result. A story without an ending feels unfinished. Give a number or a concrete outcome.
Memorised. Interviewers often follow up with questions like “What exactly did you say?” or “What would you do differently today?”. If you really lived the story, these are easy to answer.
No link to the role. Choose examples that match the requirements in the job ad.

The most common interview questions See open positions