“STAR” interview skills: based on the quality model

"STAR" interview skills: based on the quality model

As the competition for talents becomes more and more intense, the flow of talents becomes more and more frequent, so the recruitment costs and human resources management risks of enterprises It is also increasing day by day, and in serious cases it will affect the sustainable development of the enterprise. One of the reasons for this situation is that companies cannot effectively identify, identify and select people in the recruitment process. So, how can companies select suitable executive talents more accurately and quickly in the shortest possible time? Are there any scientific selection tools and techniques that can help relevant personnel accurately judge the applicant's real experience and quality and ability, and have a reliable grasp of the match between the person and the job? The STAR interview technique based on the quality model adopted by Group A in the process of recruiting human resources directors will provide help and inspiration for your actual work.

Group A is a private group enterprise with diversified operations. In recent years, under the leadership of the president, the business of each branch company has improved significantly. But the fly in the ointment is that there is always no suitable candidate for the position of "Human Resources Director" of the group company, and it has been replaced three times in a row in recent times. All three of them were personally selected by the boss as "one in a hundred", but they were all unable to succeed in their roles due to various problems. This troubled the CEO who was eager to expand the market and prepare for his grand ambitions. He thought that he had been in the market for a long time and had met countless people. He always made accurate judgments on people when negotiating with customers. The above three directors were personally selected by himself. , it shouldn’t be wrong, why did you encounter such a result?

In desperation, the boss invited a consultant to help solve this problem. With the help of the consultant, the crux of the problem emerged: the experience and quality of the candidates during the recruitment of Group A The lack of scientific evaluation skills in the authenticity and effectiveness of talent-job matching is the main reason why the right talents cannot be accurately found.

In these several selection processes, Group A’s judgment of people was more based on the boss’s personal experience and feelings, which lacked objective standards, scientificity and stability. Sex, it’s no wonder that we can’t always select the right talents. Later, under the guidance of consultants, Group A successfully applied the "'STAR' interview technique based on the quality model" to the recruitment interview process of the human resources director.

Understand "STAR" interview skills

The so-called "STAR" interview skills refer to the fact that during the interview process, the interviewer focuses on actual cases that occurred in the applicant's past work and life. Ask questions about the four elements of the situation (Situation), the task to be completed (Task), the action taken by the applicant (Action) and the result of the action (Result), and measure the applicant's own quality and performance by understanding his past behavior. Whether the ability is suitable for the requirements of the position being recruited, it can also be called the "STAR" interview method.

The "STAR" interview technique is one of the behavioral interview methods. It is a test and consideration of the applicant's work behavior. In practical application, it must be combined with the quality model and used as a basis. Base. Enterprises use pre-established quality models to clarify the key behaviors of employees that produce high performance, and then determine the quality behavior standards for the positions they recruit. On this basis, we can combine the "STAR" interview skills to achieve targeted questions and accurate analysis, so as to quickly grasp the true qualities and abilities of the candidates within the limited interview time, and recruit outstanding talents with real talents and practical knowledge for the company. Talent.

Three steps of "STAR" interviews

Applying "STAR" techniques to conduct effective interviews can be divided into three steps. First, establish a quality model, that is, the company's employment standards; secondly, based on specific According to the recruitment requirements of the recruitment position, select appropriate qualities from the quality model as the main inspection content at the interview stage, and design an interview question bank according to the specific requirements of the position to prepare for the interview; finally, you need to ask and follow-up questions effectively during the interview to obtain the required information. Real information.

The first step is to establish a quality model and clarify the evaluation criteria

The standard for judging talents by the "STAR" interview method is the quality model. Group A has established a quality model for each position in 2005. Based on the existing quality model, the consultant conducted necessary interviews with the company CEO and outstanding employees of the human resources department for the position of human resources director in order to better understand the position. Learn more about the company’s specific needs. During the interview, it was found that the company's human resources management is not very standardized. The group and branch companies basically operate independently, and many resources cannot be shared effectively. According to last year's employee statistics, it was found that the brain drain was relatively serious, mainly due to a single promotion channel, and the awareness of talent training and personnel development was quite weak. Therefore, the company hopes that the newly arrived human resources director has modern human resources management concepts and rich human resources experience, and can implement centralized management of human resources and reduce unnecessary costs from aspects such as recruitment, training, salary management and performance management. , achieve coordinated management of the group and branch companies, and provide strong human resource guarantee for the rapid development of the enterprise. In addition, since the group has many branches and subsidiaries, there are great differences in human resources management. Therefore, the new human resources director needs to have strong communication and collaboration skills.

Finally, the consultant started from the three dimensions of managing self, managing tasks and managing others. For the position of human resources director of Group A, he pre-selected "professionalism", "accuracy" from the general quality model for all employees. "Efficient", "Value-oriented" and "Communication and collaboration", "Resource integration" and "Developing others" were pre-selected from the general quality model of managers. These six items were used as the main contents of the interview stage (see Table 2), and Each quality item is graded.

The second step is to establish an interview question bank and make preparations

Adequate preparation before the interview is a necessary prerequisite for a successful interview. The consultant established a quality-based model based on the key positions of Group A The interview question bank has 4 to 8 related interview questions for each quality. Examples of interview questions designed for the "communication and collaboration" quality of the human resources director position are as follows:

● Please tell us about an experience when you and a senior manager or colleague of the company had differences in solving a certain problem. How do you handle differences of opinion?

● Please tell us about an experience like this: In order to complete a certain job, you needed support from another department; but that department believed that cooperating with your department in this job was not the focus of its work. How did you deal with this? Problem?

● Introduce an example: You found that a subordinate had difficulty doing a certain job correctly. After analyzing the problem, what did you say and do? How did the employees react at the time? How does what you do affect their behavior?

The third step is to ask questions and follow up to obtain real information

After clarifying the quality requirements and designing the interview questions, it is time to directly question and communicate with the candidates. During this process, interviewers should pay attention to the four aspects of "STAR", clarify the information they need, ask targeted questions purposefully, and quickly and accurately analyze whether they have obtained what they need based on the candidates' answers. If there is any missing information, follow up immediately.

In addition, the purpose of behavioral interviews is to predict whether the applicant is qualified for the target position through his past experience. Therefore, during the interview process, it is very important to obtain effective and real information. This is to measure whether the applicant has the qualifications for the position. Necessary conditions for the required qualities and abilities. Therefore, ensuring that the event information provided by the applicant is true and valid becomes another purpose of questioning. It is necessary to obtain more and more detailed information to ensure the authenticity of the applicant's answers, because the more specific the results obtained, the more real the event is, and the more accurate the evaluation will be. The key points of questioning around "STAR" are as follows: As shown in Table 4: In short, the interviewer should pay attention to that the real event must be a complete "STAR". The background, tasks, actions, and results of the event must be clear, and the actions must be consistent with the background and tasks, and ensure that they are indeed correct. Contribution to the results achieved. At the same time, the applicant's description of behavioral events should clearly reflect the work done by the subject "I" rather than the general "we". The following is one of the examples of questions and questioning conducted by the interviewer during the interview process of Group A. At the same time, the interviewer's analysis and processing of the candidate's answers are attached.

Interviewer: Please talk about an experience that impressed you the most: you and the senior management of the company or your colleagues had different views on solving a certain problem. How did you handle the differences between you at that time? ? [Note: This question is to examine the quality of "communication and collaboration"]

Applicant B: Mentioning this question reminds me of such an incident: That was in 2005 In March, our company held a high-level meeting. At that time, the company's business was constantly expanding, and we had established branches or offices in many large and medium-sized cities across the country. In this way, we will inevitably encounter the problem of different salary standards in different places. Sometimes there will be several different sets of salary standards in one place. At that time, the company did not have a mature system for managing salary standards for employees stationed abroad. Therefore, this internal imbalance caused many employees to be dissatisfied with their wages, and some even changed jobs because of this. [Note: The above is a description of the background (S)]

This problem must be solved, so I proposed to the company centralized management of human resources. [Note: This is describing task (T)] At that time, almost everyone else did not support me in doing this. They opposed me and felt that self-management by each city could integrate human resources work with local actual conditions, and this There have never been any major problems, and there is no need to work hard to solve them. But I think there is still a problem after all, so I examined the pros and cons of the company's centralized management of human resources and came to the conclusion that centralized management is imperative based on the company's future strategic development. Then, after sufficient vertical and horizontal communication, [Note: The above describes action (A)] finally received strong support from the company. [Note: The above is the description result (R)]

Interviewer: You just mentioned that you resolved the differences through centralized management of human resources and sufficient communication. So, let me ask: What about centralized management? What aspects did you consider at that time? What specific work was done at the same time? How? [Note: The above is a question about action (A)]

Applicant B: I remember that I submitted a report on the centralized management of the company's human resources.

First, combined with the company's future development strategy, it explains the purpose of centralized management and the advantages that centralized management can bring. To put it simply, it is: first, it is conducive to the sharing of information and the integration of advantageous resources; secondly, the company's human resources management 15 %~20% are management activities, and 80%~85% are operational activities. From the perspective of the company's future strategic development, strategic management activities will increase in the future, and centralized management is conducive to collective effect; finally, recruitment, training, performance , The unification of salary management work will help enterprises save management costs and improve resource utilization. Specific to the current problem we are facing, it will also help determine salary standards, solve problems, and improve employee satisfaction. Of course, I also pointed out in my report at the time that centralized management must be properly managed and extreme centralized management of human resources should not be carried out. Authorization should be appropriate and each city should maintain a certain degree of flexibility according to its own actual situation.

In addition, while conducting investigations and demonstrations, I also had a certain understanding of the current situation of each branch and office. After comprehensive consideration of the actual situation in various places, I proposed a centralized management plan for the company's human resources. On this basis, certain specific differences in various places were resolved through meetings.

The above questions are mainly aimed at the quality requirements of “communication and collaboration” and were asked and questioned by Applicant B. Judging from his answer, Applicant B can be based on the future development of the company and think deeply about issues from the perspective of the company's goals. Overall, his performance is very good. Specific analysis: First of all, the description of past events is very clear, and the four elements of "STAR" are basically complete. In the applicant's first statement, the actions are highly consistent with the background, tasks and results, and you can believe that this is a real experience. If B directly answered that he had implemented centralized management of human resources without any obstacles and the results were very good, this would be questionable. Then, after investigation and argumentation, the applicant took the initiative to communicate with relevant personnel in a reasonable manner and came up with a proposal. Through various efforts, the problem was finally solved, which shows that he has certain communication and collaboration skills.

With the help of consultants, Group A finally recruited a human resources director who truly met the needs of the company through the successful application of the "STAR" interview technique based on the quality model. Furthermore, Group A has promoted and applied this method in the recruitment of other positions in the company, and has achieved good results. In the words of the group boss, "the business market and human resources have achieved double harvest."

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