In job interviews, keep your backstory short
Use the STAR method, but avoid backstory scope creep.
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Read time: 4 minutes
I remember one of the last interviews I did before starting my own company. The interviewer asked, “Could you tell me about a time when you solved a problem?”
What I wanted to say: “I solve problems all day. I wish there weren’t so many problems to solve. But I can’t think of one at this moment.”
I can’t remember what I ended up saying.
But what I can tell you, is that I have a deep distaste for behavioral interview questions.
I hated them as a candidate, and I hated them on the other side as a hiring manager. I believe this type of question doesn’t tell you much except whether the candidate prepared a set of stories beforehand.
But, alas, behavioral questions are still the default for many organizations. Recruiters and hiring managers will use how you answer these questions as a proxy for your effectiveness. So if you’re interviewing, it behooves you to learn how to answer them well.
For example, you’ve likely heard of the classic STAR (situation, task, action, results) framework. As a hiring manager, I often got lost in candidates’ answers because they told stories that were meandering and hard to follow.
I realized that candidates were using the STAR method, but accidentally spending too much time on the situation part of STAR. Backstory scope creep was happening.
Maybe it’s because you’re getting warmed up, or because you believe describing the situation is crucial for the rest of your story to make sense.
The problem is, when you spend too much time describing the situation (i.e. the context or background), you take time away from the other parts of STAR, all of which are more interesting and relevant. The situation should be a brief set up, so you can let the other parts of your STAR story really shine.
Most candidates speak for too long in their initial response. I’ve been guilty of this myself. I’ve seen my interviewer’s eyes glaze over. I’ve listened to myself talking in real time, and thought, “Why am I saying this? This is boring and kind of irrelevant.” If you are ever bored by what you’re saying, don’t ignore it. Wrap up your thought, and pivot.
When in doubt, aim to keep the situation part as short as possible. Aim for 2-3 sentences and 10-15 seconds, then move on to the task, action, and results. This allows you to allocate the bulk of time on what the problem was, why it mattered, what you did to solve it, and how much money you made for your company. Those are the juicy parts.
Zooming out, this doesn’t only apply to interviews. I realized I have a tendency to optimize for being comprehensive, when often, the actual better goal is to be interesting. If you are the same, then switching from “I need to tell it all” to “I need to tell what’s most useful and relevant” will take practice. A lot of continuing to improve is simply realizing your own tendencies, then catching yourself and consciously choosing a different approach.
In terms of getting to the root cause of where this tendency to be comprehensive comes from, I believe it’s partially because we’re afraid if we leave out a detail, we’ll be punished for it. And in the past, perhaps we were. So it feels safer to err on the side of sharing too much.
On the other hand, deciding what context to include requires you to have a point of view. It requires you to choose “this, not that.” Your choices might be wrong, and that feels a little stressful.
But NOT making a choice, and defaulting to sharing everything with equal weight, is not the solution. You will end up overwhelming your stakeholder, in this case, the hiring manager. They want to get an accurate sense of your abilities and experience, but won’t be able to, because they’re asleep.
It’s tempting to want to be thorough, even in times that don’t require it. You must fight this temptation. Keep the backstory short, so you save time for the good stuff.
Further reading
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"They want to get an accurate sense of your abilities and experience, but won’t be able to, because they’re asleep." Haha epic!!
The trap underneath this: the Situation is the safe part — you’re just narrating facts, nothing you can be judged on yet. So under pressure people expand the bit that feels safest and rush the Action, which is the only part actually being assessed. Catching yourself going long on backstory is a decent real-time tell that you’re dodging the exposed bit.