‘I Am A Star’

I am a Star framework is based on my real-life experiences, an adaptation of career theories and focuses on transforming thinking patterns within an individual. The ideology behind creating the STAR framework comes from my personal experience. What I learnt from losing my high-profile career to a sudden head injury. How I overcame a major career crisis. Managing an involuntary transition of this nature shook the pillars of my belief. The motivation and resilience of starting all over again with more determination and clarity was possible only with the personal dialogue I created with myself.

How and what we communicate with ourselves in the privacy of our own minds play a massive role in shaping how we wish to be perceived by others. This internal dialogue is a key to create and manifest our future. Training our minds to use words of encouragement act as a powerful tool to transcend our limitations and empower ourselves to achieve what we desire.

View from an airplane window at the wings and flying over a scenic landscape of green hills and rivers

I want to introduce ‘I am a STAR’ framework and showcase one of its advantages. This approach will help candidates embark on a new career journey, infuse them with self-awareness with belief and confidence. It will also offer a deeper understanding of the interview processes.

A migrant career coach

Image of questions in a person's head who is travelling overseas for their career in New Zealand

These are some of the many questions that kept surfacing in my mind when I came to New Zealand 9 years ago.

Today I hold a responsible position as a Career Coach, where I coach Migrants and graduating international students to be ready to join the New Zealand workforce. At the beginning of our coaching sessions, I see the same self-doubt, lack of confidence, fear, and anxiousness in the candidate’s eyes. Everything I say or do can make a huge difference in the way they perceive themselves and make sense of the new world of work around them. I soon realised there was a strong need to implement a robust transformative coaching practice to get sustainable outcomes. Newcomers to the country needed a bit of handholding to find a way to take the learnings beyond the scheduled calls.

Bringing the STAR to life

In my previous roles, for over 12 years, my profiles entailed launching brands, meeting targets, and managing high performing teams. My team was always excited for the incentives they earned, but what also motivated them was being the ‘STAR of the month’! This recognition came with responsibilities like training newbies and moving higher up the corporate ladder.

Moving on to my academic role with my learners in New Zealand, I was the first tutor to make report cards with silver & gold STAR stickers for demonstrating soft skills in and outside of the classroom. This was a risk I took knowing it could backfire anytime if my students thought I was treating them like kids. Guess what, they argued over getting a silver star when they worked hard to get a gold! The STARs mattered!

Fast forward to today, I have the privilege to coach freshers to senior level professionals. I have realised there is just one key ingredient to success. The belief in what they do and why they do it. We are all passionate, we all love what we do then why is it that we fumble and step back from expressing who we are? I had my aha moment while recording the video for Work Connect on STAR behavioural questions, which I have now integrated with the ‘I am A Star’ framework.

As a coach, I partner with the candidates to build confidence, to flaunt their soft skills and prepare them to win over that job interview. Newcomers to the country are usually not familiar with behavioural questions. Back home, interview questions were framed around how much you know and what will you bring to this job (targets, sales, qualifications, networks, technologies etc.). Asking them to memorise 4 or 5 situations is adding to the pressure they are already in.
Q – ‘Tell me a time you dealt with stress?’
Ans – ‘Well, every day. Which day should I talk about?’

Pratishtha describing the Star framework and the Star behavioural questions for Work Connect

The candidates that I work with, learn how to answer these questions differently without getting stuck in the structure. Before they come for a practice interview session with me, they must complete some homework (the teacher in me loves accountability). The task involves going through past work experiences and coming up with examples: “share 3 happiest days in your work life, it can be anything, what did you do/ not do?”

Our interview session begins with an invitation to share their experience of making the big decision to move to a new country, and one of the questions I ask is ‘What is the one thing your heart told your mind when you said goodbye to your loved ones at the airport?’

Taking the flight to travel abroad and unleash the next stage in your career

Moving on to sharing the happy 3 days for our mock interview – ‘I got 2 promotions in 6 months’. ‘I was awarded for introducing new methods.’ ‘My team achieved the highest sales 3 months in a row’. These examples open the conversation up, and when we dig deeper, I see that sparkle in their eyes. Together we focus on these achievements, look back on how far they have come, and that is what help them change their perception of the situation, identify the positives, and pick up the learnings from the negatives.

We look at the job description, understand why the employer is interested in knowing how they think and behave and find ways to use these experiences as examples. Now the interview feels like a cakewalk. They are my STAR, and I make them say it loud and repeat after me ‘I AM A STAR’ ‘in any given Situation I complete my Task, take necessary Action and achieve excellent Results. Some of them ask for a hard copy for the bathroom mirror.

I love it when they call me after the interview and excitingly say ‘I was smiling when I said how I handle stress. that was fun, and I don’t mind doing it again.’ Most likely they do not have to go for a second interview. They are hired 🙂

The STAR in me strongly believes that a mind stretched by new learnings and awareness can never go back to its old dimensions. Do not forget to have a dialogue with yourself and say out loud ‘I AM A STAR’.

Your Coach Pratishtha

Pratishtha loves finding innovative ways to help her clients believe in themselves. In this article she introduces the STAR framework – a simple yet powerful framework, mixing her real-life experiences with coaching to transform thinking patterns with the client.

Learn more about Pratishtha here.