The Danger of One-Size-Fits-All Interview Coaching

I wince any time I see an online career services influencer declare definitively that their way to frame an interview answer is THE way. Our clients are not homogeneous, their target industries are all different, and everyone has a unique voice and learning style. Our job is to match our clients with the right tool. 

When I started teaching interview skills ten years ago, I taught all my clients to use the STAR (Situation – Task – Action – Result) model when telling success stories. The STAR framework has been the most widely taught interview narrative technique since it was developed in 1974 by industrial organizational psychologists William C. Byham and Douglas Bray. And for many candidates, it works. It gives structure, keeps answers organized, and helps clients avoid rambling.

But I soon noticed that a few of my clients found the concept of “Situation” too ambiguous. So I changed my framework to CAR (Challenge – Action – Result), which seemed to clarify it for some. Then I added an “O” for Obstacles because I saw that clients were getting lost in too much detail in the beginning of their story. For some clients, COAR became STOAR, while others still needed the simplicity of CAR.

Every interview coach has their favorite iteration of STAR: PAR, CART, CARL, RSTAR, etc. Which is the best narrative framework for a success story in an interview?  That depends on the industry, the role, the interviewer, and where the candidate is in the interview process. None of the STAR-derivatives may be the best choice for our senior level clients. None of the STAR doppelgangers are a perfect narrative vehicle for jobseekers in tech.

To best serve our clients, we need to build and use a whole toolbox of narrative structures. 

Here’s the limitation with STAR: When we teach the “Actions” in STAR, we encourage clients to “say what you did”,  highlighting the specific actions they executed to create the result. Demonstrating successful execution is important for most career roles, especially in the beginning of the hiring assessment when the primary question is whether someone has the competencies to do the job.

But at the senior executive level, particularly in the final rounds, that question has already been asked and answered. Every candidate left standing by then is qualified to get the job done. Final round executive candidates are often evaluated on their judgment: how they think, how they make decisions, and whether their judgment can be trusted in complex, high-stakes situations. Strong executive candidates must make their thinking visible. If they just talk about what they executed instead of what they decided, they risk sounding like a manager instead of a leader. Managers execute strategy. Leaders set strategy.

This is where STAR-based frameworks start to break down. For a senior executive in a final round interview, STAR does not promote the articulation of decision-making and judgment. With its emphasis on “Action”, STAR stories focus on the “what” instead of on the “why”.

So – what framework might be more effective at senior levels to demonstrate judgment? Again, that depends on the client, the role, and your style as a coach. Success stories that highlight judgment and decision-making will answer these questions:

• What was the pain point you identified?
• What were the risk factors that made addressing that pain point complex?
• What was your reasoning/thinking?
• What decision did you make?
• What impact did that decision have, and why did it matter to the company?

And if you must have a pithy acronym, you might try DRIVE: Define – Risks – Insights – Verdict – Effect.

“Tell me about yourself” is another framework that could use alternatives that reflect what different industries truly value. The commonly-used framework of PRESENT (what I’m doing now) – PAST (what I’ve done before) – FUTURE (what I would bring to the role and/or why this is the right next step for my career) is functional. It serves well enough in most instances, but it doesn’t help our clients make a strong, memorable entrance at the top of the conversation. That structure may not promote the highlights that matter to that interviewer.  What does?  Once more, that depends on the industry, the interviewer, your client, and your willingness as a coach to think creatively. There is only one nonnegotiable with a “tell me about yourself” answer: it must address how the candidate’s professional background relates to the role.

Let’s use senior executives again as an example. For their “tell me about yourself” answer, I want my executive clients to highlight the signature problems they solve for a company, the initiatives that they own end-to-end, the strategic decisions they’ve made, and the impact of those decisions. I want their introduction to say very clearly what they offer as a leader and what they can do for the company. A PRESENT-PAST-FUTURE framework is just not specific or targeted enough as a guide.

I challenged January’s CIC live cohort to design their own “tell me about yourself” narrative framework to use with their clients. Their creativity was truly inspiring. The variety of structures and styles they developed was reflective of the variety of industries and clients they coach. An introduction during a technical interview requires a framework that highlights problem-solving and depth of expertise. A new grad’s story may lean more heavily on potential, learning mindset, and translating academic and early experiences into clear value for the employer.

Different roles require different narrative emphasis. And different stories need to be told differently in different interview contexts. When we default to one structure for every client and every role, we limit our client’s ability to communicate effectively in that interview for that role. The narrative structure we teach should serve the specific role-aligned signals our client needs to communicate to a particular interviewer at a given stage of the interview process.

Defaulting to one narrative framework limits our coaching. Our role is not to give clients one “right” way to tell a story. Our job is to equip our clients with the best structure for the signals they need to communicate in each unique interview.

I still teach STAR. I probably always will. It’s earned its place in our profession for good reason. But after coaching enough clients across enough industries, I’ve become a little suspicious of any framework I’m tempted to use too automatically. The moment a framework becomes my default instead of my deliberate choice, it’s usually a sign that I’m leaning on habit instead of judgment. And judgment – not acronyms – is what great coaching is built on.