Cut a rambling STAR answer down to ninety seconds

Updated · techinterview.org

behavioral prompt

Edits an answer you drafted so it lands in about ninety seconds, keeps only your facts, and flags where you gave the team credit for your own work.

Paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Fill the blanks first; everything stays in your browser.

fill in

star-answer-tightener.prompt
I am preparing an answer to this behavioral question:

{{question}}

Here is my draft answer:

{{story}}

Edit it into a spoken answer of about 90 seconds (roughly 200 to 230 words). Rules:
- Use only facts I gave. If the result has no number, leave a placeholder like [metric] and tell me what number to go find.
- Keep the structure situation, task, action, result, but spend most of the words on action.
- Every action sentence must have "I" as the subject. Mark each place where my draft said "we" and you could not tell what I personally did.
- Cut background the interviewer does not need to understand the decision.
- End with one sentence on what I would do differently or what I learned, only if my draft contained one.

Return the edited answer, then a list of the cuts you made and why, then the two follow-up questions an interviewer is most likely to ask after this answer.
how to run it

Read the result aloud with a timer. If it runs long, ask for a version at 60 seconds. Answer the two follow-ups yourself, out loud, before your next practice session.

what good output looks like

An answer you could say from memory, at least one "we" flagged, no invented numbers, and follow-ups that target the weakest part of the story.

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