Acing a Behavioral Interview with a SOAR/STAR Document
“Tell me about a time when you dealt with conflict.”
“How would you handle an upset customer?”
“What role do you normally take in your team?”
If you’ve ever received a non-technical interview, you might have prepared for questions like these. Most interviewers use what’s called behavioral interviewing, a style of interview filled with questions that look to past performance as a predictor of future performance. Behavioral interviews do an excellent job of allowing a recruiter to see an applicant in action, without the use of complex role-play structures and on-the-job evidence.
I often frame the recruiter’s dilemma this way: “Anyone can say anything about themselves, so what is the difference between 4 candidates who are all great team-players? Are they all equally skilled at cooperation, communication, and synergy? How will a recruiter decide who to pick?”
The ideal answer to a behavioral interview question gives a recruiter real-life evidence of what you’ve done in the past to back up your claims about your current or future self. To continue with the team-player example, let’s say three candidates said, “Yeah, I’m a great team-player!” But one candidate said, “Well, I’ve worked on a five-member digital team before. Our goal was to increase our website’s SEO. We had a marketer, a backend coder, a graphic designer, a manager, and me, who wrote the content. And we geographically covered 3 of the 7 continents. In the end, we moved the rankings of 3 critical keywords from 16th to 1st.” If the interview was based on this question alone, a recruiter could make a snap decision, right?
As someone who has worked in the hiring process for several years, I’ve unfortunately seen many interviewees respond to behavioral questions at face value. Take the first example question from above: “Tell me about a time when you dealt with conflict.” Many interviewees respond to this question with something like, “Well...I actually am not a very conflict-oriented person. I’m pretty peaceful and calm. I normally just get along well with other people.” A response like this makes a claim (“I’m peaceful!”) without proof. Ultimately, answering behavioral questions at face value leaves recruiters as helpless to make a hiring decision as they were before the question.
My goal in this article is to comprehensively cover the concept of SOAR/STAR. Simply put, SOAR/STAR is a structure you can use to format your responses to behavioral interview questions. You might have noticed above how SOAR/STAR emphasizes the use of personal stories. Given you have a relevant piece of experience to turn into a story, SOAR/STAR will help you ace your interviews. (If you don’t have relevant experience, you may want to reconsider if the job you’re applying for is right for you.) To make the explanation easy, I’ll use a simple example, to show how effective this structure can be, even for achievements that you feel were not very noteworthy.
Let’s say a recruiter asks me, “How have you shown initiative and self-motivation in your current position?” This is how I might respond using SOAR:
S - SITUATION
To start off your response, describe what was happening at the beginning of your story.
“During my sophomore year at Georgia Tech, I was hired as a first-year Resident Assistant, or RA for short. Hurricane Irma, which swept through metro Atlanta, was a specific incident where I really stepped up on my own in that role.”
O - OBSTACLE or T - TASK
Next, describe the problem or task at hand in your story.
“Even though all RAs go through a two-week training for the fall semester and a four-day training for the spring semester, we were uninformed on how to handle significant weather issues like Hurricane Irma. On the fourth floor, all of my residents had tree branches right outside their windows, and, in the weather of Hurricane Irma, the branches were scraping against the windows, ripping bug netting and threatening to break the glass. In addition, the Hurricane hit during the weekend, meaning my Hall Director (my boss) and all of our normal maintenance workers were unavailable.”
A - ACTION
Describe what you did to alter the Situation and handle the Obstacle or Task.
“In order to handle this dangerous situation, I took the initiative to walk room by room, to all 48 of my residents, in order to ensure personal belongings and important items were away from the windows and that the blinds were down. I also made sure that all residents had enough food in the event of a power outage, and, if they didn’t, I promised to provide food in my room. Lastly, I made sure they all had my personal phone number on their phones so they could call me immediately if there was a broken window or any other serious problem.”
R - RESULTS
Describe how your Actions led to a positive outcome.
“Because of my actions, my residents were well-equipped to handle Hurricane Irma, and I was able to manage all weather-caused problems either before they manifested or in an early stage before any property damages were created.”
That’s how SOAR/STAR works! You can use this structure of response to answer any behavioral interview questions. Here are a few more critical notes to help your preparation:
First, while this Hurricane Irma story highlights my initiative and self-motivation, I could have just as easily highlighted my crisis management skills or my leadership skills, all depending on what the recruiter asked. With SOAR/STAR, I only need a few stories to respond to many different interview questions. Ideally, you should prepare enough stories to cover most interview questions you suspect you may be asked. (And err on the side of having too many stories! You definitely don’t want to have to repeat stories or come up with them on the fly.)
Second, to keep track of these stories, I highly recommend creating a SOAR/STAR document in which you list as many stories as you have, along with a list of potential characteristics (e.g. “initiative”, “crisis management”, “leadership”, etc.) underneath each story. Once you have this document, you can add to it whenever you go through an experience that can be converted into a new SOAR/STAR answer, keeping your interview responses fresh and building new and better ones over time. (I’ve also seen people write their stories on an index card, with the potential characteristics on the flip side. This style of organization is really helpful for kinesthetic learners.)
Third, as you document each story, make sure to time yourself speaking them. Each story should take 1 to 2 minutes to recite. Any longer, and you start risking ineffectiveness due to length. In a hiring process, recruiters often get into interview fatigue: the exhaustion that comes from often-nervous people talking about themselves for hours in a day. Recruiters love concise responses.
Lastly, tie your resume into your SOAR/STAR document. When I create resumes for clients, I have a specific section under each previous or current role for accomplishments and achievements. In some cases, your recruiter will ask you questions based off of your resume, and you can launch into your SOAR/STAR response straight from there. In other cases, you should be able to point at your resume and say, “Here I have listed that I ‘applied duty protocol to 15+ high-risk situations.’ One of those situations was Hurricane Irma...” Building your resume and SOAR/STAR document in tandem helps build credibility to recruiters.
I’m wishing you the best of luck as you prepare! Interviews can be both fun and scary at the same time, so give yourself grace, reward yourself for every milestone, and please reach out if you have any questions. Always happy to help at megan@ryancbailey.com.
Megan Koh is a Career Development Coach, with over 7 years of experience in helping others find and achieve their dream jobs. She lives south of Atlanta and is engaged to her sweetheart Danny.