Tip One:
When answering the behavioural interview questions, you may like to adopt an answer process known as the STAR framework. The STAR framework is a structured approach to answering behavioral interview questions by breaking down your response into four key components: Situation, Task, Action, and Result. Here’s how to use it:
Situation: Describe the context within which you performed a task or faced a challenge at work.
Example: “In my previous role as a sales associate at a busy retail store, we experienced a sudden influx of customers during the holiday season.”
Task: Explain the actual task you were responsible for in that situation.
Example: “My task was to manage the cash register while also ensuring that the customers in line were satisfied and the checkout process was smooth and efficient.”
Action: Describe the specific actions you took to address the task.
Example: “I started by greeting each customer warmly to make them feel welcome. I then quickly and accurately processed their purchases while maintaining a friendly conversation to keep them engaged. When the line got long, I called for backup staff to assist and managed the flow to other registers to reduce wait times.”
Result: Share the outcomes or results of your actions.
Example: “As a result, our store maintained high customer satisfaction levels despite the increased traffic. We received several positive comments from customers about the efficient and friendly service. Additionally, our store managed to achieve a record high in sales during that period.”
By using the STAR framework, you can ensure your answers are comprehensive and focused, clearly demonstrating your skills and experiences to the interviewer.
Tip Two:
Be yourself! Truly, it is best to write out your interview responses yourself and to use examples and stories from your own experiences. We look for a wide variety of people who demonstrate a wide variety of different traits, competencies, skills, and more.
We understand you may use applications such as ChatGPT to help build your responses, but we encourage you not to rely on them too much. We are interested in your unique stories, ways of communicating, and ways of doing things. Copy-pasting from online or from apps like ChatGPT won’t give us that information! Plus, we have tools that detect when candidates have used such tools in the interview.
Tip three:
Take your time. The Chat Interview is completely untimed; you can start, take a break, or come back later—it’s all up to you. Taking your time allows you to go away and think of good examples and draft up your response.
Tip four:
Make sure you write enough, this is the interview, after all! We need enough information from you to try to understand how you might fit the role you are applying for. So, we need long enough responses to collect that information—around 150 words are perfect, but if you can write more, go for it!
Tip five:
Often, hiring decisions come down to the availability of roles or the particular fit of the candidate. So take all of the tips above, combine them, and keep trying!