Interview guide
The STAR method, without sounding scripted
STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) is the standard shape for behavioral answers. Used well, it's invisible: the interviewer just hears a clear story about what you did.
Updated October 31, 2026
- Situation and task: 1–2 sentences together.
- Action: most of the answer. What you did and why.
- Result: real numbers if you have them, then one lesson if it's useful.
- Don't say the labels out loud.
How long each part should be
| Part | Share of the answer | What to include |
|---|---|---|
| Situation + Task | ~15% | Context and your responsibility |
| Action | ~60% | Your decisions, why you made them, what you tried |
| Result | ~20% | Outcome with real numbers; preserve “about” or “estimated” |
| Lesson | ~5% | Only if it adds something new |
Example: “Tell me about a time you handled a production incident”
Last spring our checkout started timing out during a sale. I was on call, so it was mine to lead. I first checked whether it was the database or our service, and the slow-query log pointed to one report query running on the primary. I moved that query to a read replica as a quick fix, then added a timeout so one slow report couldn't block checkout again. Once we were stable I wrote the postmortem and we added an alert on primary database load. Checkout recovered within about 20 minutes, and we haven't had that failure since. The bigger lesson for me was separating reporting traffic from customer traffic by default.
Common mistakes
- Too much situation. If you're 40 seconds in and haven't acted yet, cut it.
- “We” everywhere. Use “we” for the team's outcome and “I” for what you did.
- Invented numbers. Say “about” when you're estimating, and never make one up.
- No story fits? Use the closest real one, or say it hasn't happened and explain how you'd approach it, clearly labeled as hypothetical.
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