S.T.A.
R Format Preparation
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.
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? Preparing for your Amazon Interview Onsite Interview
Highlights – The STAR Method
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.
1. S.T.A.R.
a. Explain the full situation you were in
b. What was the task at hand?
c. How did you action on it? What did YOU do? Try to use “I” statements.
d. Finally, the results. Great, you helped a customer by increasing a products usability
by 17%. Now, on what scale did you have an impact? Did this get picked up by other
teams? Did you coach others in this? Did you teach a small cohort best practices for
this? Interviewers will dive deep to find out how you made an impact. DETAILS!
2. Try not to tell the same story twice. We will be discussing your experiences and
accomplishments together. If you tell the same story to an interviewer, they won’t have
enough data.
3. Your stories will potentially have MULTIPLE examples of the LP’s. The more robust and
built out your stories, the better data the interviewers can collect. If you lack in a certain
area, a different interviewer may be able to back up where you lacked with a different
example you gave. Again, numbers and percentages and being ultra-specific is a huge plus!
4. Remember these must be high impact stories and should reflect your career highlights.
5. Do you have any other specific questions about the interview and what to prep for? If you’d
like to hop on another call once you’ve prepped some of your leadership principles, I would
be glad to give you feedback and further delve into your stories.