What is a PSR?

A PSR is a short story that describes your skills and experience. It is used to answer questions about your strengths, skills, and abilities. The PSR framework provides a logical structure to paint a memorable picture for your interviewers, helping them to remember you and your accomplishments long after the interview ends. Each PSR story contains three parts.

• Problem: What was going on?
• Solution: What did you do?
• Result: What was the benefit to the employer?

Sample:

• Problem: Staff were submitting time cards with errors.
• Solution: I created a spreadsheet that would automatically allocate staff time to correct charge codes.
• Result: Staff time cards were accurate, saving me time on correcting and updating time cards.

Sample interview response to : Tell me about a time you came up with a solution to solve an existing problem at work.

Answer: When I was working as a program supervisor I was spending a lot of time reviewing and correcting time cards. Our time cards were done manually by each staff member. I decided to create an automated time card using excel. The new template automatically checked hours for each day and allocated time to different charge codes. The new system reduced the number of errors and cut the time it took to review weekly time cards down by 75%.

Click here to download a worksheet to help you create your own PSRs.

Click here to view a list of sample interview questions where the PSR technique could be used.