STAR Method

Here is one example of a behavioral question and using the STAR method to respond to it.

How do you handle conflict? How do you solve problems?

Since well functioning teams need to handle conflict, you might get questions such as:

Describe an example when you had a disagreement with your coworker/manager. Why did it happen? How did you handle it?

Disagreements by themselves are not a problem. In fact, they are bound to happen, so it’s all about how you react.
Again use the STAR method here, focusing on how you resolved the situation professionally and productively, choose a situation in which the disagreement was resolved well.

Situation: "One day before we were going to launch a new feature, a new vulnerability was announced in vendor software we use. Patching the problem adequately meant sliding the already delayed schedule. Another team member and I disagreed about which took precedence, the security patch or the feature release. The marketing department had a lot riding on this deadline.”

Task: "We needed to decide which goal to pursue and work together as a team."

Action: "We decided to look into the details of each problem together. Clearly the deadline was important, but our users’ data might be at risk if we didn’t patch our system. I was tasked to research the security threat more closely, and I realized it did not apply to our users because none of them used that browser which had the vulnerability. So we could just post a message on our website about the browser."

Result: "We were able to release our product feature on time even while taking the time to work together to consider an important issue not everyone agreed with at the time."

Keep the STAR method in mind whenever you are asked to problem-solve or describe an experience during interviews.