Storytelling is a great way to stand out during job interviews, but how you tell your stories will truly help you shine. The CAR method (Challenge, Action, Result) is an excellent way to showcase your professional achievements while leaving the competition behind. Together, these three components become a framework for telling the story of your accomplishments. Let’s discuss the importance of storytelling and how the CAR method can assist you in responding to behavioral interviewing techniques. We’ll also break down each element of the CAR method and examine examples of how to apply it to answer specific interview questions.
“The most powerful person in the room is the one with the best story.”
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple
Why Use Storytelling?
Long before Shakespeare put quills to paper or the writers of Stranger Things put their fingertips to a keyboard, humans have made sense of the world and the human experience through storytelling. From “Once Upon a Time” to “The End,” people have used stories to communicate their histories and teachings through oral tradition. Humans are hard-wired to receive information via the basic narrative structure of exposition, rising action (conflict development), climax, falling action and resolution.
Interviewers often ask candidates behavioral questions that focus on past experiences to assess how they navigated specific workplace situations and what skills they used. Behavioral interviewing is a more effective method for determining whether a candidate aligns with the role and the organizational culture. Rather than asking someone how they would handle a possible theoretical scenario, they hone in on how they managed it in the past in real life.
The CAR technique is a compelling approach to responding to behavioral interview questions, as it provides a structured narrative that effectively illustrates your professional skills and accomplishments. Let’s examine each element of the CAR method.
The CAR Method’s Challenge
Discuss your role, the company and what made the challenge necessary. Context is important here. Challenges can involve innovating new business solutions, streamlining inefficient processes or resolving conflicts. You can also address challenges in the context of management and leadership or through lessons learned from failures. A strong lead is essential to any great story, so remember to frame the challenge within the relevant context to keep the interviewer’s attention.
The CAR Method’s Action
This is your opportunity to discuss the three to five actions you took that contributed significantly to achieving a positive result. It’s a great time to flesh out your story by stating what made things particularly difficult or where you failed, had to pivot, or course-correct. This is where you demonstrate that you can meet various challenges with innovative ideas and initiative.
The CAR Method’s Results
This portion of the CAR method highlights how your ideas, initiative and drive positively affected the organization. Whenever possible, demonstrate how your efforts have benefited the bottom line (for example, revenue, profits, cost savings, retention or increased productivity and efficiency) using data, metrics and KPIs relevant to your industry.
Examples of Interview Questions & CAR Responses
Let’s look at specific examples to better understand how to apply the CAR method to behavioral interview questions.
How would you rate your organizational skills?
Challenge: “I consider myself a highly organized person. For example, in one of my previous roles, my supervisor tasked me with developing and launching a podcast to provide up-to-date, detailed information about specific programs for a targeted audience segment. This complex project involved multiple teams, technologies and stakeholders with tight deadlines and potential challenges at various stages.”
Action: “Utilizing my strategic planning and project management skills, I collaborated with various individuals and teams to successfully lead this complex venture from inception to completion. I enlisted the support of our purchasing department to identify the necessary hardware for recording and editing audio. I searched high and low for the perfect intro music and worked closely with our graphic designers to create a logo that aligns with our organization’s brand. I also worked closely with our IT department to create a webpage for the podcast and identified various podcast hosting platforms. I also liaised with outside organizations to schedule guest speakers.”
Result: “The podcast was a huge success. We produced over 100 episodes, covering a wide range of topics and providing our target audience with specific, relevant information on complex subjects. We experienced a 74% increase in engagements across our social media channels and received excellent feedback from our audience members, which helped increase trust in our brand. The organization’s stakeholders were extremely satisfied with the overall product, and my supervisor promoted me to team lead for our marketing team.”
Can you describe a situation where you used persuasion to convince someone to see things from your point of view?
Challenge: “In my current role, I frequently collaborate with my team and employees from other divisions. Recently, we had to develop a new marketing strategy for a client after our existing strategy proved unsuccessful. Our web development team disagreed with our content marketing team about the specifics of our latest marketing strategy. Both teams had good ideas, but neither seemed willing to compromise on implementing them.”
Action: “To manage the conflict, I suggested we focus on different clients for a few days to diffuse the tension and allow people to calm down, think clearly, and consider the situation constructively. After a few days, I gathered my team for a lunch meeting to discuss the new marketing strategy in a more casual setting. I allowed everyone to present their perspectives and took notes on a whiteboard. I then led both teams in a group discussion to better understand the components, benefits and drawbacks of each strategy.”
Result: ”After everyone had a chance to share their knowledge and expertise and express their opinions, we were able to resolve the differences and compromise on specific components and tactics to create a new marketing strategy that was highly successful, resulting in a 37% increase in revenue for our client.”
Can you provide an example of an important goal you set and describe how you achieved it?
Challenge: “In my previous role as a development coordinator at an animal rescue organization, the Executive Director tasked me with raising funds to build a new veterinary clinic to save critically ill and injured cats and dogs.”
Action: “With the primary campaign goal of $500,000, I utilized the SMART model (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Based) to ensure we had clear and actionable objectives. I leveraged my fundraising expertise to understand the giving capacity and affinity of our donor base. I ensured that our fundraising goals aligned with our overall mission and communicated the ‘why’ behind our fundraising efforts to inspire and motivate people to donate.”
Result: “The giving campaign was an overwhelming success, and we exceeded our fundraising goal by over $250,000, which we used to purchase vital medical equipment and supplies for the new clinic.”
In future interviews, you can rely on the CAR method to give you the upper hand as you deliver succinct and compelling messages that keep you at the forefront of your interviewer’s mind. Over time, and with plenty of practice, you’ll find that the CAR method provides a structure for success that will keep you on track, even during the most grueling interviews.
Anne Evenson is a native Austinite and a proud Veteran’s spouse with over 20 years of marketing, communications and program coordination experience in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. She is also a sculptor, jeweler and all-around dabbler in the arts and loves to help military-connected individuals discover their inner creativity.
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