Welcome to Workplace English, the podcast that helps you communicate confidently in professional settings. Following Sophia’s interview in the previous episode, Kevin now moves on to the next stage. In this round, he will discuss technical scenarios and share his experience using the STAR Method in a segment titled “Talking About Your Experience.” Our dialogue features Daniel, a 32-year-old engineer, as the interviewer, and Kevin as the candidate. Let’s get started. Daniel: Hi Kevin, I’m Daniel from the engineering team. Today I’d like to walk through some technical scenarios and learn how you approach real project challenges. Kevin: Nice to meet you, Daniel. I’m happy to share my experience. Daniel: Great. Could you describe a technically challenging project using a structured approach, such as the situation, task, actions you took, and the results? Kevin: Sure. Situation: Our mobile application was experiencing severe performance issues after a rapid increase in users. Task: I was assigned to identify the bottlenecks and restore acceptable response times. Daniel: What actions did you take to diagnose the problem? Kevin: Action: I conducted profiling, analyzed server logs, and discovered that inefficient database queries and excessive network calls were the main causes. I then redesigned the caching strategy and optimized the API endpoints. Daniel: Optimization can be risky. How did you ensure stability during the changes? Kevin: I implemented the improvements incrementally, added monitoring dashboards, and coordinated with QA to run regression tests before each release. Daniel: And what was the final result? Kevin: Result: The average response time improved by 60%, crash rates decreased significantly, and user satisfaction scores increased in the following quarter. Daniel: Impressive. Looking back, is there anything you would do differently? Kevin: I would introduce performance testing earlier in the development cycle to prevent the issue from escalating. Daniel: How do you usually prioritize between technical debt and new feature delivery? Kevin: I evaluate the long-term impact on system reliability and negotiate with stakeholders to allocate time for critical improvements alongside feature work. Daniel: That aligns with our development philosophy. Do you have experience collaborating across teams during such initiatives? Kevin: Yes, I worked closely with backend engineers, product managers, and operations teams to ensure the solution addressed both technical and business requirements. Daniel: Excellent. That covers my questions. Do you have anything you’d like to add? Kevin: Only that I enjoy solving complex problems collaboratively and continuously improving system performance. Daniel: Thank you, Kevin. If you meet our hiring criteria, our HR team will contact you to discuss the employment contract and next steps. Kevin: Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to hearing from your team.