| Much earlier in my career, I was in the UK public sector. Internal interviews within the department were conducted using something that mixed STAR with a set of core competencies (external candidates were given a bit more leeway). So as the interviewee, you had to reply in the style of STAR but also ensure that your answers tied back into those competences. To have a chance of success, you'd need to demonstrate as many competences as possible. As a methodology it makes it extremely easy for the interviewer to assess suitability (especially for candidates trying to move up the chain - there used to be a qualification assessment for that too) and to do so in a way that can easily be explained/defended if a decision is challenged. As an interviewee, though, it really was the most awful experience. The questions themselves weren't codified, so the interviewer could ask whatever they liked and you had to find a way to tie it back to a relevant competence in order for your answer to "count" and then explain using STAR. The problem, in my view, is that there's a huge difference between what works for interviewers and what's likely to work for an interviewee. STAR makes it easy for an interviewer, but it's not the way that engineers normally communicate - just as coding challenges are often quite unnatural (like everyone else, I've had some awful technical interviews). |