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Firms will want to gain an insight into the skills and capabilities you have developed through your studies, extracurricular activities and work experience. You should therefore remind yourself of your personal experiences, positions of responsibility and extracurricular involvement and focus on the skills and abilities you have developed.

Firms will want to understand your motivation for pursuing your career of choice, so you will need to reflect on how your experiences have influenced your decision to pursue your desired career. In addition, firms will want to know your reasons for wanting to work for them. Research the firms you are applying to/interviewing at so that you are able to differentiate them from their competitors and explain why these differentiating factors particularly appeal to you.

Structuring your answers

Your interview answers will of course vary depending on the particular question. However, regardless of the question, your structure should be clear. To maintain a strong structure, I would recommend drafting your application answers with temporary headings in place, just to ensure your answers remain logical and coherent from the outset (you can then delete these headings before submitting your answers). 

For example, if you are discussing your motivation for wanting to work at a particular firm, do not mention training at the start, in the middle and at the end of your answer. Perhaps have a section dedicated to the development of employees, thus avoiding the risk of repeating yourself and coming across as unable to write concisely and coherently. 

When discussing skills, competencies and strengths, the key is to give context before setting out the skills you have acquired, as this will make it easier to convince a recruiter that you actually developed the skills you mentioned. For example:

Note that using words such as “elected”, “selected” and “invited” can help to show that somebody else identified something special about you, and this led to them picking you over other people. This can help to give you credibility and set you apart from others.

The STAR method

When answering scenario-based questions, for instance “what is the biggest challenge you have faced?”, “detail a time when you have worked successfully in a team” or “when have you successfully undertaken a leadership role?”, the STAR (situation – task – action – result) approach to answering questions could be worth bearing in mind. 

Situation

Start by setting the scene, for example: “whist at university, I was President of the Finance Society”. If you are discussing your biggest challenge, explain why the circumstances posed a challenge. If you are answering a question on teamwork, explain what led to you joining the team. For a question on leadership, explain how you ended up in a leadership position.

Task

Next, you could explain your (or your team’s) designated task or role, for instance: “my team was tasked with arranging a ball for 400 people…”.

Action

This is the most substantial part of the answer and requires you to explain what you actually did to complete the task, how you went about doing it, why you did it/why it was a challenge (etc.) and the skills you used/developed whilst taking such action. Remember that the employer has little interest in what others did and accordingly, when you are dealing with a teamwork question, try to avoid repeatedly using “we”.

Result

Conclude by explaining the impact your actions had and what you actually managed to achieve. Make sure you’re prepared to discuss what you learned and what you could have done differently.

We cover motivation and competency questions in much more detail in our "Writing successful applications" course.

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