Use STAR to structure answers to behavioural questions like "Tell me about a challenging problem you solved".
| Letter | Stands for | What to say |
|---|---|---|
| S | Situation | Set the context — when, where, what project |
| T | Task | What was your responsibility or goal |
| A | Action | What YOU specifically did (use "I", not "we") |
| R | Result | Quantify the outcome if possible |
S: "Our main API was responding in 4-5 seconds during peak load."
T: "I was asked to reduce response time to under 500ms."
A: "I profiled slowest endpoints, fixed N+1 queries, added Redis caching and database indexes."
R: "Response time dropped to 180ms — a 95% improvement."