Why STAR exists
A board member has a sheet in front of them with the competency at the top and a list of indicators under it. As you talk, they are trying to write evidence next to indicators. STAR is the order that makes their job possible: where were you, what did you have to do, what did you do, what happened. Give it to them in that order and they can write as you speak. Give it to them out of order, or with the Action missing, and they have to reconstruct it afterwards from notes, which is when marks go missing.
publicjobs says it in one line on its Interview Advice page: “It is important to prepare examples and evidence in advance, that best demonstrate your competence or capability.” Examples and evidence. Not stories.
What each letter is worth
Situation
Two sentences. Where you were, when, and the one fact that makes the task hard. “In October 2025 I was a Clerical Officer in the Passport Office. Two weeks before the mid-term break we had 400 applications in the queue and one of three staff off sick.” That is enough. Boards write very little against Situation, because it evidences nothing about you. A Revenue EO candidate in 2025 summed up the board’s attitude: “they are not keen on background stories, get straight to the point.”
Task
One sentence. What you, personally, had to achieve, and by when. “My job was to make sure every application with travel dates inside the month was processed before the break.” The Task is where the board hears the level of the example. A CO task is to process the applications. An EO task is to organise who processes them. An HEO task is to set the standard and track it.
Action
Most of the answer. Four to six things you did, in order, with the reasoning for the ones that were a choice. First person throughout. Name the tools, the people by role, what you actually said. This is the part the board marks, because the indicators are almost all actions: “prioritises”, “checks”, “escalates”, “consults”, “adapts”. If the indicator says “seeks feedback” and you sought feedback, say the words.
Result
A fact a reader could check. A number, a date met, a complaint that did not come, what the manager or the customer said afterwards. “All 140 travel-dated applications were out by the Thursday; the other 260 went the following week, and the supervisor kept the sort-by-travel-date rule.” If the result was mixed, say so; boards trust a mixed result more than a perfect one, and the follow-up will get there anyway.
The fifth letter: Reflection
Irish boards have made this a standard probe. Candidates in 2026 Capability Framework interviews describe being stopped and asked: “That’s fine. What would you say you learned from this project?” Another: the board “will ask you to speak more on the example to root out what you learned from it.” The publicjobs sample questions include “What values underpinned your approach?” So the answer needs a last sentence: what you took from it, what you would do differently, and if you can, the value it came from. Have it written down. Learning invented on the spot sounds like it.
The ratios a board hears
Boards do not time your Situation with a stopwatch, but they notice. Across the answers we have seen marked, the pattern is consistent:
- Situation and Task under a quarter of the answer. Over half and the mark falls whatever the story, because the board has spent a minute writing nothing.
- “I” in most sentences of the Action. “We” is fine for what the team faced. The actions need a name on them.
- Two to four indicators evidenced clearly in a two-minute answer. That is what a Pass at Good (22 to 34 of 50) looks like under the Capability Framework. Nobody hits all eight indicators in one story, and boards do not expect it.
- Concrete over adjectives. Interviewer training warns boards about “highly-articulate candidates” who “make a very good impression but be over-rated when the evidence is reviewed objectively.” The correction is to count the checkable specifics. An answer that is mostly “I communicated effectively and worked collaboratively” has very few.
A worked example, marked
Executive Officer, Capability Framework, Delivering Excellence. The question: “Tell me about a time you had to plan and prioritise a heavy workload, your own or a team’s, to hit a deadline.” The answer below is illustrative, written to show the shape rather than taken from a candidate.
SLast November I was acting up as EO in a grants section of four Clerical Officers. The department brought forward the closing date for a scheme by three weeks, which left us 900 applications to assess in fifteen working days, with one of the four on leave.
TMy job was to get every application assessed and the decision letters out by the new date without the error rate going up, because the previous year’s audit had found errors in one file in twenty.
AI started by splitting the 900 by scheme type and complexity, because the simple ones were two-thirds of the volume and took a quarter of the time. I built a shared tracker so everyone could see the count by day and I set a daily target of 65. I gave the two experienced COs the complex files and paired the newest CO with me on the simple ones, checking every file she closed for the first three days, then one in five. On day four we were 40 behind, so I went to my HEO with the numbers and asked for one CO from another section for a week; she agreed once she saw the tracker. I moved the decision letters to a mail merge, which one of the COs set up, so the letters went the same day as the decision instead of in a weekly batch.
RAll 900 were assessed by the deadline, two days early in the end. The audit sample that spring found errors in two files out of 120, so about one in sixty against one in twenty the year before. The tracker and the daily target stayed in use after I went back to my own grade.
RWhat I learned was to go to my manager with the numbers on day four rather than day eight; I had been reluctant to ask for help and the tracker made it an easy conversation. If I did it again I would set up the mail merge on day one instead of day six.
What a board would write against it: plans and prioritises (the split by complexity and the daily target), maintains quality (the checking regime), uses technology (tracker, mail merge), escalates with evidence (the HEO on day four), a measurable result (900 on time, error rate), reflection with a specific change. Level fit is EO: organising four people’s work and making a call within a defined remit, not running a division. Scene-setting is about a fifth of the words. That answer sits in the Pass (Good) band with room above it, around 30 to 33 of 50. It would not reach Very Good, because the board did not hear the candidate handle anything going badly wrong; a probe on that is where the last marks are.
The mistakes that cost marks
- The story with no Action. A minute of Situation, then “so we got it sorted”. The board has nothing to write. This is the single most common reason a candidate who “interviewed well” is not reached.
- The team story. Every verb is “we”. The board’s follow-up will be “what was your part exactly?” and if the honest answer is small, the mark is small.
- The result that is a feeling. “The manager was delighted” is not a result. What did the manager do next? What number moved?
- The wrong level. An EO candidate whose best example is doing a routine task well has given a CO example. Boards mark the level of the task, not the effort.
- The claim that cannot be true. A shop assistant whose spreadsheet “saved the company two million”. Boards probe it, the candidate cannot stand over it, and the whole example goes.
- Negative evidence. Blaming the manager, naming a customer, being proud of skipping a rule. One remark keeps a good answer out of the top band.
- Reusing the story. The same project under three competencies. Boards notice, and some will ask for “a second, different example” on the spot.
When STAR is the wrong tool
Under the Capability Framework, publicjobs publishes three kinds of question and only the first is a STAR question. “What strengths have you developed that would help you communicate and influence others?” wants named strengths with a line of evidence each. “What motivates you to deliver excellence?” wants a real reason. “What are your biggest knowledge gaps in relation to digital focus?” wants honesty and a plan. HSE and council boards add knowledge questions, and Garda and Prison Officer boards add what-would-you-do scenarios, marked on the order of your actions and your reasoning. A two-minute story in reply to any of these reads as not answering the question, and boards mark it that way. The competency-based interview guide goes through each type.
Preparing STAR answers that survive the follow-up
- Write each example as five short paragraphs, S T A R R, and read the Action paragraph back. Count the verbs with “I” in front of them. Fewer than four and it is not ready.
- Check the Task against the grade. Would someone already in the job recognise it as their work?
- Write the result as a number or a checkable fact. If you do not have one, find one: an email, a date, a figure from the system.
- Write the reflection sentence now. Learning, what you would change, the value behind it.
- Say it out loud against a clock. Two to three minutes. If it runs over, cut Situation first.
- Ask yourself the three probes boards use most: “What was your part exactly?”, “What would you do differently?”, “Give me a second example.” If any of them makes the wheels fall off, the example is not ready either.
That last probe is the one to respect. Interviewer training calls it the funnel: the board “settles on one example of the candidate’s behaviour and drills down through it” until they are “sure that the candidate has done what they claim to have done.” A real example gets better under that pressure. A padded one does not.