SQL Interview STAR framework (Situation, Task, Action, Result)

 ✅ 1. Start with the Project Summary (Situation)

"I worked on a Sales Analysis project where the goal was to analyze customer buying patterns and improve sales strategy using SQL."

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✅ 2. Define Your Role (Task)

"My role was to clean, transform, and analyze the sales data using SQL, and generate insights for the business team."

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✅ 3. Walk Through the Implementation (Action)

Break this down into technical steps:

• Data Cleaning:
  Used SQL to handle missing values, remove duplicates, and standardize product names.

• Data Transformation:
  Joined tables such as Orders, Customers, Products using INNER and LEFT JOINs. Created calculated columns like total revenue, profit margin, and customer lifetime value.

• Analysis & Queries:
  Wrote SQL queries to find top-selling products, monthly sales trends, and customer segments. Used CASE WHEN for conditional logic and CTEs for complex queries.

• Reporting:
  Created views and exported query results to Power BI for visualization.

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✅ 4. Share the Outcome (Result)

"The insights helped identify the top 20% of customers contributing to 80% of the revenue, and the business team launched targeted campaigns that increased sales by 15% over the next quarter."

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Bonus Tips:

• Use technical keywords (JOINS, CTEs, Window Functions, Aggregations).

• Keep it relevant to the job description (e.g., if it's for a reporting role, mention views or dashboards).

• Be ready to show sample queries or explain logic line by line if asked.

Great! Please answer a few quick questions so I can tailor your SQL project explanation:

1. What was the name or goal of your project? (e.g., Sales Analysis, Customer Retention, Inventory Management)

2. What datasets or tables did you work with? (e.g., Orders, Customers, Transactions)

3. What were some key SQL tasks you performed? (e.g., JOINS, Window Functions, Aggregations, CTEs)

4. What was the final output or impact? (e.g., Improved reporting, identified churn risk, increased sales)