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What Is The SBI Method And How Does It Help You Interview Better
In an interview, you respond to situational or behavioral questions by using your “career stories” to describe your past experiences and provide examples. These examples from your career allow the interviewer to visualize working with you, understand your thought process, and bring your CV to life during the conversation. Instead of wasting time telling them “I’m a hard worker,” tell them the story about one of your successes to demonstrate your skills and capabilities. Including the essential facts in every career story also enables an interviewer to share those examples during a hiring decision meeting if they need to persuade others to hire you.
Each career story must be told with the key details included and that is how the methods of SBI, CARL or STAR will help you improve your interview skills and results. We’ve covered CARL and STAR in our other blogs.
SBI, Situation, Behavior, Impact is an alternative to the STAR or CARL approach. SBI can be used for interview preparation, but it has also been taught in leadership training to help leaders provide their teams more concise, actionable feedback.
Remember, as you progress through the interview process you want to adapt your career stories for each interviewer (recruiters, hiring managers, teams, leadership, culture); Read more about how to do that in our blog How To Interview Prep for Recruiters, Hiring Managers, Teams, Leadership And Culture or work with one of our coaches and we’ll help you.
Using this template, you can draft your career examples for interview preparation using the SBI method:
- Situation
- What is the context of the situation?
- The company or client and team structure did you work in and your role?
- What was the challenge, task or initiative you were focused on?
- Behavior
- What was your approach to the situation?
- What strategy or plan(s) did you build or collaborate on to achieve the desired results?
- How did you get “buy-in” from others?
- Impact
- How did your behavior or action affect your coworkers, other teams across the organization and how did it affect you personally? What is a learning experience that created a positive change in how you manage similar situations?
These are a few examples but they depend on your experience and areas of expertise. SBI can be a good option for those who influence others around them, as leaders, facilitators or as a mentor.
The key is to have a set of these career examples that you can access when it’s time for interview prep. You start with the example as written above, then you adapt each example for the interviewer and role you are being considered for.
When you work with our team, you’ll receive the appropriate Allora tools to enable continuous collaboration between you and your coaches between sessions and maximize your productivity.
Our Allora Interview Prep Worksheet gives you an easy way to draft your career stories, share edit suggestions to improve them, and adapt them for different interviewers or companies and choose from STAR, SBI or CARL templates.
If you’re looking for interview coaching to improve your confidence or results at any stage of your career, book a free session with an Allora coach!
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Kelly Kugler
Kelly is the Founder of Allora Collective, a career manager with two decades of experience, and a relocation strategist for expats and digital nomads in the US, Europe, and LATAM. After creating talent programs for startups and global companies, including General Assembly, NFL, and Booking.com, she built Allora Collective. She manages the careers of individuals providing one-on-one coaching and partners with companies to customize workshops and coaching packages for their teams.
