8.2 Communicating Your Skills
So far, you’ve taken an inventory of your skills and begun to consider the ways in which some of those skills might be transferable. Now, you just need to know how to communicate them!
The STAR Method
Knowing how to best communicate your skills will help you throughout your career, from writing a resume to networking effectively to answering challenging job interview questions. It begins with using the STAR method. You talk about a time when you put your skills to work.
STAR is an acronym that stands for:
What was the situation? What problem needed to be solved?
What was your task?
What action did you take, step by step?
What was the result? (i.e., what was accomplished, improved or learned)
Using the STAR method ensures that you demonstrate the skills you have in a clear and focused manner. It provides an opportunity to articulate your skills and form a foundation that prepares you to answer behavioural questions during job interviews. Becoming familiar with the STAR method will be especially useful when writing resumes, cover letters, and preparing for interviews.
The STAR method is good to use when responding to behavioural interview questions, where you are asked to talk about an occasion where you faced a certain situation and had to take some action.
Once you have determined the questions you are likely to be asked, prepare scenarios from your experiences – from work, education, placements, volunteering, etc. – where you demonstrated the skills and knowledge required for the target job. Instead of simply telling the interviewer you have the skills they want, your answers to these questions provide a demonstration of those skills.
Here is an example:
Behavioural Interview Question
“Can you give me an example of a time you resolved a conflict between employees?”
Response Using STAR
Situation
“In my previous HR role, two team members were consistently clashing over project responsibilities, which was affecting their productivity and the team’s morale.”
Task
“My task was to mediate the conflict and help them find a way to collaborate effectively.”
Action
“I met with each employee individually to understand their perspectives, then brought them together for a mediation session. I facilitated a discussion where they could express their concerns and guided them in setting clear expectations for their roles.”
Result
“By the end of the session, they had reached a mutual agreement on how to divide responsibilities, and their working relationship improved. This not only resolved the immediate conflict but also enhanced team collaboration moving forward.”
OpenAI. (2024, August 19). ChatGPT. [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
Prompt: “Example of the STAR technique being used in a behavioural interview question response about an HR situation.”
In summary, the components of STAR are:
- Situation: Conflict between employees.
- Task: Mediate and resolve the issue.
- Action: Individual meeting and a mediation session.
- Result: Improved working relationship and team collaboration.
Accomplishment Statements Using the STAR Method
Now that you are familiar with the STAR method let’s talk about accomplishment statements. An accomplishment statement is your STAR story distilled down into one phrase. Here is the simple formula for an accomplishment statement:
In one phrase, an accomplishment statement explains…
- The action you took (Verb),
- Under what circumstances (Context), and
- The positive outcome (Result).
Let’s say you want an accomplishment statement to support your organization skills, accuracy, and/or database skills. You think of an example: You had to track employee vacation days (Context), and so you organized (Verb) a database, and you were commended for its accuracy (Result).
Your accomplishment statement could be:
“Organized database to track employee vacation days and was commended for accuracy.”
Here are some more examples of accomplishment statements:
“Coordinated recruitment activities, successfully fulling 15 open positions within a two-month period.”
“Implemented a digital filing system, reducing document retrieval time by 30%.”
“Processed employee payroll with 100% accuracy, ensuring timely payments for over 200 staff members.”
OpenAI. (2024, August 19). ChatGPT. [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/chat
Prompt: “Simple accomplishment statement for an HR assistant job.”
“Articulating Your Skills” from Career and Workforce Readiness by Trent University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.—Modifications: Used section The STAR Framework, edited, added example; Used section Accomplishment statements, edited, changed one example, added additional examples.
“Interview Preparation” from Career and Workforce Readiness by Trent University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.—Modifications: Used paragraphs two and three of section Using the STAR framework, edited.
