They matter to me.

Call it STAR questions -- stands for Situation, Task, Actions, Results. So they ask you a question like "describe a situation where you led a project across multiple disciplines where you had positive results" - your answer needs to fall into the STAR buckets. I'm a consultant so we deliver actions - but half the time we never know what the actual results are!

NP here. I've never heard of this. how is this question usually phrased?

I’m a hiring manager. My HR mandates behavioral interview questions, so we have to ask them. However, the positions that I hire for are technical and in a niche area, requiring fairly unique skills/experiences. So honestly the behavioral questions just end up as a waste of time. If you don’t have the technical skills, the behavioral questions are irrelevant.

At a higher level though - it seems to be a general trend to move toward behavioral interviews (apparently there’s research that shows that that kind of an interview is a better predictor of fit than a more traditional interview). So I would prepare for those kind of questions going forward.

Just had an HR screen for a job that I'm well qualified for. Didn't realize they were doing the STAR (tell us a about a Situation, what were the Tasks, Actions, Results) questions as well and really flubbed one of them, ugh! Was not mentally prepared for that today.

How much weight do you give to those types of questions in the hiring process? I guess I get a knock for ability to think on my feet which normally I'm very good at.