So, you prepared your resume, took some time to carefully apply for a job and you have landed that BA interview – congratulations!!
Throughout my career, I have interviewed many Business Analysts and one aspect that separates a good BA from a great BA is the ability to tell a story!
In this post, The Skilled Business Analyst outlines how you can apply the STAR technique to behavioral based questions and effectively tell a story that demonstrates your skills, abilities and strengths.
What are behavioral based questions?
- These questions measure how you reacted to certain situations using your past experiences.
- The questions test your skill, abilities and personal qualities in certain situations.
- They give the interviewer a guideline on how you are likely to handle situations at work in the future.
How do you recognize behavioral based questions?
- Describe a situation when…
- Tell me about a time when…
- Give me an example when…
What is the STAR technique?
- Situation – Set the background and context
- Task – Describe what was asked of you
- Action – Describe the actions that you took
- Result – Discuss the outcomes or results
Applying the STAR technique – a working example…
Question: Describe a situation where you had to manage difficult stakeholders in one of your projects. How did you eventually get buy-in from these stakeholders?
- Situation
Process improvement project – streamlining back-office processes to make them more efficient.
There were employees in the back office who had been there for long and had become accustomed to doing their work in a certain way.
They were resistant to the project as they feared we wanted to introduce automation and their jobs would become redundant.
- Task
A team of three Business Analysts were assigned to map their business processes, analyze them for inefficiencies and suggest ways to improve their processes.
I was assigned the lead Business Analyst for this project.
- Actions
– Frist, we engaged the employees line managers so they can communicate the benefits of the initiative to the employees (what’s in it for them)
– We did a high-level document analysis to see what was already documented and also become familiar with the domain (speak the same language as them)
– We chose observation technique as a starting point – we observed as they did their day-to-day work. (let them lead and be comfortable around us)
– We produced high level process maps of the processes based on the observation and did a second iteration where we were actively asking questions. (Demonstrate to them that they are still the SMEs)
– Finally, we had walkthrough sessions with the employees (let them have a say in the recommendations)
- Result
Employees were happy to give feedback on the mapped processes and even started offering suggestions on how to improve their processes.
If you are keen on learning more about applying this technique, please contact The Skilled Business Analyst today to discuss how we can take your career to the next level!
Yours in Analysis
Tendai
Business Analysis Instructor