STARIs Best For Amazon Interview| Ex-Bar Raiser

Amazon interview training and candidate materials, all recommend using the STAR model when answering the Amazon interview questions about the Amazon Leadership Principles.

The point they are making is less about exactly what model you use, but that using a model will ensure your answers are easy for your interviewer to

Understand
Capture in their typed notes
Analyse for the evidence of strength in the Amazon Leadership Principles

Can You Only Use STAR To Answer Amazon Interview Questions?

There are in-fact several different models in existence to structure answers for your Amazon interview questions but in truth they all deliver, more or less, the same structured answer.

People have different preferences, as the nuances of each of the models confuse some, but are clear to others. Your interviewer is unlikely to be able to tell which exact model you’re using to answer your Amazon interview questions, so you should pick the one that makes the most sense to you.

The STAR model is the one I’m most comfortable with and I’ve even created my own innovation called STARI, which adapts the model to make it even more Amazonian (see my FREE Video Tutorial “The Hidden Amazon Leadership Principle”). To help you, I’ve collected the most popular models and I’ll then explain why I prefer STARI.

Situation– what is the situation you’ve found yourself, your employer, your customer in? What’s the issue that you need to deal with?

Hindrance– what is the blocker? What is getting in your way of moving forward and getting the right outcome? What is making the situation especially challenging

Action– what exact steps did you choose to take and why?

Result– explain the outcome, what happened in the end?

Evaluate– was this the right thing to do? Could a different course have had a different outcome?

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PAR

Problem– what is the problem you, your company or your customer are facing? What’s the issue that you need to deal with?

Action– what exact steps did you choose to take and why?

Result– explain the outcome, what happened in the end?

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SPSRI

Situation– what is the situation you found yourself, your employer, your customer in? What’s the issue that you need to deal with?

Problem– what is the problem you, your company or your customer are facing? What’s the issue that you need to deal with?

Solution– what did you decide needed doing to solve the problem and how did you do it?

Results– explain the outcome, what happened in the end?

Improvements– what could have done better. Or what you learnt and applied to later projects to get better results?

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SBI

Situation– what is the situation you found yourself, your employer, your customer in? What’s the issue that you need to deal with?

Behaviour– what was your behaviour, what did you do?

Impact– explain the outcome, what happened in the end?

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STARI

Situation– what is the situation you’ve found yourself, your employer, your customer in? What’s the issue that you need to deal with?

Task– what key milestones or deliverables do you need to achieve to solve issue?

Action– what exact steps did you choose to take and why?

Results– explain the outcome, what happened in the end? Improvements- what could you have done better?

Improvement– what could you have done better. Or what you learnt and applied to later projects to get better results.

Why Do I Prefer STARI To Answer Amazon Interview Questions?

I prefer STARI as both a candidate and an interviewer. I believe it gives the interviewer the easiest framework to follow your story, in the moment.

Your interviewer is doing so many mental processes in tandem as you talk. The more you can break your story into sections that provide the foundation for the next section- the easier it will be for their brains to follow. And because it gives the candidate a really tightly blocked out model so as to ensure they avoid irrelevant details.

Here’s the role each section plays in answering the Amazon interview question.

Situation: needed to help the interviewer get on the same page as you. It sets up all of the information to come below.

Task: I like this section in the STAR model over moving straight to Solution/Action/Behaviour of other models. That’s because in most instances it takes achieving multiple sub-deliverables, to solve the overall issue.

For example, you might need to get commitment from a team, fix a bug in a system and pacify a customer- all of which will have multiple actions needed to achieve them.

So Task serves the purpose of explaining those sub-deliverables, so you can organise how you explain your Actions in the next section, and your interviewer can package them up into parcels in their head, as you speak.

Action: here you can organise every action that you took by relating it back to the task to keep your narrative neat and tidy.

Result: same as with all models, here you explain the outcome. But because you included the Task section earlier; you have framed up multiple Results you can talk about.

For example, you could give the Result of solving the situation but you could also explain any changes to your relationship with the team you needed commitment from, any positive changes to the system that has the bug and the impact of the relationship with the customer. And of course at Amazon your results are best represented with data points.

Improvement: Amazon loves people who are always looking to improve. My FREE video Tutorial “The Hidden Amazon Leadership Principle” explains why.

Ultimately, as long as you use “a” model, regardless of which one and adhere to it- you should be able to deliver a clear and concise answer to the behavioural questions.