Interviewing 101

Today we'll cover the very basics of interviewing. We'll tell you about the STAR Method and show you a list of commonly asked questions. Over the next two days, make sure you schedule time with Allison or Andy to go through a practice interview.

The STAR Interviewing Method

The STAR method is a structured manner of responding to a behavioral-based interview question by discussing the specific Situation, Task, Action, and Result of the situation you are describing.

You can think about these four parts of a response...

Situation: Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You must describe a specific event or situation, not a generalized description of what you have done in the past. Be sure to give enough detail for the interviewer to understand. This situation can be from a previous job, from a volunteer experience, or any relevant event.

Task: What goal were you working toward?

Action: Describe the actions you took to address the situation with an appropriate amount of detail and keep the focus on YOU. What specific steps did you take and what was your particular contribution? Be careful that you don’t describe what the team or group did when talking about a project, but what you actually did. Use the word “I,” not “we” when describing actions.

Result: Describe the outcome of your actions and don’t be shy about taking credit for your behavior. What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? What did you learn? Make sure your answer contains multiple positive results.

This is super helpful when you’re in the prep phase and thinking about possible answers to questions that they may ask. However, I wouldn’t rely on this during your interview. You’re probably going to be a little nervous and trying to remember to include these four things in each response can be a little tricky. When you really think about it, these 4 things (situation, task, action, and result) they’re just the basic parts of a story. In the interview, don’t think about STAR, just think about how you can tell a really good story.

Some very common behavioral interview questions

1. Tell us about yourself.
2. What are you involved in?
3. Why are you interested in this company?
4. What are your career goals? What is your dream job?
5. What unique perspective would you bring?
6. What is your greatest weakness?
7. What is your greatest strength?
8. Tell us about a time you failed at something.
9. What was the most recent book you've read?

Some other interview tips to keep in mind

1. The most important thing to remember is to try to craft a story. Think of your full interview as the story you want to tell and each question is a chapter. With each question you answer, give a little narrative or example. Before the interview, think about the things that you really want to convey (like a characteristic, accomplishment, or previous experience). Think about this will help you map out how you want the interview to go.
2. Always smile and make eye contact.
3. It’s okay if there are a few moments of silence as you think about how to answer a question. When it’s silent, don’t freak out, just keep calm and stay relaxed.
4. The most empowering advice we've gotten before an interview was something like this: “You’re talented enough that you really don’t need this position to make things happen. In reality, you should be interviewing with this company to see if YOU accept IT”. It helps you go into the interview with a lot of confidence.
5. At the end of the interview, they will always ask “Do you have any questions for us” and it’s always good to have questions prepared. There are two types of questions you can ask: information or personal. For informational questions, make sure it’s a question that you couldn’t find the answer to by looking at the website. This makes it kind hard to come up with informational questions. I would encourage you to stick to personal questions - ask them about their experience or how what they learned helps them in their current profession, or what they most important lesson they learned in the past few years. People love talking about themselves.

Schedule a practice interview

Put some time on Andy or Allison's calendar to run through a practice interview.

Andy's calendar

Allison's calendar

Start to generate 9 mockups of images that can be posted to social media. You should generate 3 different kinds of posts (sale, holiday, quote, informational images, etc) that are done in three different styles. After you have used Illustrator or Photoshop to generate the posts, use AdParol's mockup tool to show what the ads would look like when posted.

Once you complete them, share them with your team and get feedback.

If you are on a team with more than one design student, you should each work on this separately.