As a Senior Software Engineer, I noticed one of our new junior developers, Alex, was struggling. They were consistently missing deadlines on their tasks, seemed overwhelmed during stand-ups, and were generally quiet. While not officially their mentor, I recognized the potential for them to fall behind and potentially face a performance improvement plan (PIP), and I felt a responsibility to help given their talent.

My task was to understand the root cause of Alex's struggles and provide informal support to help them get back on track.

I started by casually offering to review some of their code, which led to an informal chat. I used active listening and probing questions to understand their perspective. It became clear that Alex was overwhelmed by the complexity of our legacy codebase and felt intimidated asking 'basic' questions, fearing they would look incompetent. They also hadn't fully grasped our version control workflow.

To address this, I broke down their current complex task into smaller, manageable sub-tasks. I provided specific, targeted resources on the legacy system's architecture and our version control best practices. I also introduced them to a less intimidating 'buddy' for quick questions and code reviews, emphasizing that asking questions was a sign of strength, not weakness. I regularly checked in, offering encouragement and celebrating small victories, like correctly implementing a minor feature or successfully resolving a merge conflict.

Within a month, Alex's performance significantly improved. They started completing tasks on time, actively participating in team discussions, and even began offering suggestions for code improvements. Crucially, they avoided the PIP, became a confident and valuable contributor to the team, and expressed gratitude for the informal support, which also subtly fostered a more supportive team environment.

The STAR method is a structured approach to answering behavioral interview questions by detailing the Situation, Task, Action, and Result of a specific experience. It helps you provide comprehensive, compelling examples.