Many companies today incorporate behavioral questions into job interviews, to get a sense of your problem solving abilities. One way to prepare for these tough questions is to do what’s called "STAR" planning. STAR stands for:
- Situation: give an example of a situation you were involved in that resulted in a positive outcome
- Task: describe the tasks involved in that situation
- Action: talk about the various actions involved in the situation’s task
- Results: what results directly followed because of your actions
According to the MIT Careers Center, you can use STAR to prepare stories that you can tell during your interview. Jason from the Dorkotech blog is a big fan of MindManager, and will soon be graduating from college. To help him to prepare for behavioral interviewing questions, he has created a simple MindManager map part that enables you to add STAR to a map, and begin fleshing out your "stories" in a visual format.
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