Customize STARCoach to focus on specific areas for your storytelling sessions.
Practitioner Name: Jane Doe
Target Role: Software Engineer at a mid-size SaaS company
Focus Areas:
- System design decisions
- Debugging under pressure
- Mentoring junior developers
- Cross-team collaboration
Known Weaknesses:
- Tends to skip the "Result" in STAR answers
- Needs more quantifiable outcomes in stories
Special Instructions:
- Push for specific metrics and outcomes in every answer
- Ask follow-up questions when answers are too vague
- Focus on leadership and ownership themes
STARCoach reads this file at the start of each practice session to customize the interview experience.
Tips for customizing:
- Replace the Practitioner Name and Target Role with your own info.
- List the Focus Areas that match the job you're preparing for.
- Add any Known Weaknesses so the coach can target them.
- Use Special Instructions to adjust the coaching style to your needs.
Example focus areas by role:
- Software Engineer: System design decisions, debugging under pressure, mentoring juniors
- Project Manager: Stakeholder management, scope changes, team motivation
- Sales: Handling objections, building relationships, recovering lost deals
- Customer Support: De-escalation, going above and beyond, process improvement
- Marketing: Campaign pivots, data-driven decisions, cross-team collaboration
- HR/People Ops: Difficult conversations, culture building, policy changes
- Leadership: Vision setting, tough decisions, team development
- AI Researcher: Handling failed experiments, collaborating across disciplines, communicating complex ideas to non-experts
- Product Manager: Prioritization under uncertainty, cross-functional alignment, handling missed deadlines
- Data Scientist: Dealing with messy data, communicating insights to non-technical stakeholders, handling failed models
- UX Designer: Handling design critiques, collaborating with engineers, balancing user needs with business goals
- Customer Success Manager: Managing difficult customers, driving adoption, handling churn situations
- Consultant: Managing client expectations, handling scope creep, delivering bad news to clients
- AI Model Trainer: Handling failed model training runs, collaborating with researchers and engineers, communicating model limitations to stakeholders, managing time pressure in fast-paced development cycles.
- SaaS Product: Handling tight deadlines, collaborating with difficult team members, managing time pressure, taking initiative and showing leadership in a fast-paced environment, problem-solving under ambiguity.
- General Behavioral Topics: Handling conflict, working remotely, meeting tight deadlines, taking initiative, dealing with failure, collaborating with difficult team members, problem-solving under ambiguity.
- Entrepreneurship: Identifying market opportunities, building a minimum viable product, pitching to investors, scaling a startup.