Interview practice
Common interview questions, and how to answer them
Most interviews, for freshers and experienced people alike, use some version of about ten questions: tell me about yourself, why this role, your strengths and weaknesses, a project you're proud of, a difficult situation, why we should hire you, where you see yourself, why you're leaving, and whether you have questions for them. Each one checks something specific, and once you know what that is, the answer gets much easier to build. Below: what each question is for, a short way to answer it, two worked examples, and why your own CV is the best list of questions to prepare from.
Updated · Loista team
The questions, and what each one is checking
The wording changes from one interview to the next, but the purpose behind each question is fairly stable. Prepare for the purpose, and a reworded question won't throw you.
- “Tell me about yourself.” A short, organised story of where you are now, how you got here and why this role is next. It often decides what you're asked after it. See how to answer “tell me about yourself”.
- “Why do you want this role?” Whether you know what the job involves and have a reason beyond needing one. Name one thing about the work itself and connect it to something you've already done.
- “What are your strengths?” Whether you know what you're good at and can show it. One strength with an example beats three adjectives.
- “What is your weakness?” Whether you can look at yourself honestly and do something about it. A real weakness, what it has cost you, and what you're doing about it.
- “Tell me about a project you're proud of.” What you did yourself, not what the team did. Freshers get this one often, about a final-year or internship project.
- “Tell me about a difficult situation and how you handled it.” How you behave when something goes wrong. Describe the situation briefly, then spend most of the answer on what you did and what came of it.
- “Why should we hire you?” A summary of fit. Pick the two things you offer that matter most for this role, with one piece of evidence for each.
- “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Whether this role fits a direction you can describe. A direction is enough; you don't need a job title or a date.
- “Why are you leaving your current job?” (or, for freshers, “Why this field?”) Whether you're moving towards something. Talk about what you want next, not what's wrong where you are.
- “Do you have any questions for us?” Whether you're interested enough to wonder about the work. Have two real questions ready, about the team, the first few months or how success is judged.
Practical questions come up too: notice period, relocation, shifts, salary expectations. Answer them plainly and briefly. They're checks, not tests of how you speak.
One shape that fits most answers
You don't need a separate method for every question. A three-part answer works for most of them:
- Answer first. Say your point in the first sentence: the strength, the reason, the project. The interviewer then knows what the rest of the answer is for.
- Then one example. Something you did, and what came of it. One example told properly is usually stronger than three mentioned in passing.
- Then connect it back. A sentence on why it matters for this role. Then stop.
For the “tell me about a time” questions, the example is most of the answer: the situation in a sentence or two, what you did, what happened, and what you'd keep or change. Some interviewers call this STAR (situation, task, action, result). The label matters less than keeping the situation short, so most of your time goes on what you did.
About a minute is a useful target for most of these, and up to two for a story. If you're well past that, check whether you're including detail the interviewer could ask for later.
Strengths and weaknesses: the same answer, told two ways
This pair is where prepared answers most often sound prepared. The usual trap is a weakness that's really a strength (“I'm a perfectionist”), which tells the interviewer little and can sound like you're avoiding the question.
Fictional example: Arjun, final-year commerce student, applying for an accounts assistant role
Weaker
My strengths are that I'm hard-working, punctual and a quick learner. My weakness is that I'm a perfectionist. I spend too much time making things perfect, but I'm working on it.
Improved
My main strength is that I'm careful with numbers. In my internship at a small CA firm, I reconciled the bank statements for a dozen clients every month, and I found a duplicate vendor payment that the client had missed for three months.
My weakness is speaking up in meetings. At the firm, I'd notice a problem in a file but wait until after the meeting to mention it, which meant it was sometimes fixed a day late. Now I write down the one point I want to make before a meeting, and I've started saying it in the meeting itself.
What changed
- One strength, shown. “Careful with numbers” is backed by something Arjun did, and it's the strength this job needs most.
- A real weakness, with a cost. Fixes arriving a day late is a believable consequence, so the weakness sounds honest rather than chosen to impress.
- Something he's doing about it. Writing the point down first is small and specific, and he can say whether it's working.
- It invites follow-ups he can handle: the reconciliation work, the duplicate payment, the meetings. Every one of them is something he did.
Arjun is fictional, and so are the dozen clients and the duplicate payment. They show the level of detail that helps; in your own answer, use what you can actually describe.
Two more examples
Fictional · about 70 seconds
Last year, our biggest dealer in the region told us he was moving to a competitor because our deliveries had been late three months in a row.
I asked for a meeting the same week, and before it I went through every late order with our logistics team. Most of the delay was one warehouse, so I could show him exactly where the problem was instead of just apologising.
We agreed that his orders would ship from a different warehouse for three months, and I'd send him a delivery update every Monday. He stayed, and his orders the next quarter were higher than before.
What I took from it is to come with the facts. If I'd gone in with only an apology, I don't think he would have stayed.
- One sentence of situation, most of the answer on what the candidate did, a clear result and one lesson. The weekly update is a detail an interviewer can ask about, and the candidate can answer it.
Fictional · about 40 seconds
The part of my degree I enjoyed most was figuring out why something wasn't working. In my final-year project, a web app for our college library, I spent more time fixing the bugs our classmates reported than building new features, and I liked that part.
A support engineer role is that work every day: finding out what's wrong for a real customer and getting it fixed. And because your product is used by small shops, the problems are ones I can see mattering to someone.
- Answer first (the candidate likes debugging), one example from the project, then the connection to this role and this company's customers. No “I'm passionate about technology”.
Your CV is the real list of questions
The questions above are the common ones. The ones that decide many interviews are the follow-ups, and those usually come from your CV: the project you listed, the internship, the gap between two jobs, the tool you said you know.
- Go through it line by line. For each line, ask the obvious next question: “What exactly did you do?”, “What went wrong?”, “Why did you leave?”
- Mark the lines you can't talk about for two minutes. Prepare those, or think about whether they belong on the CV.
- Freshers: your project is your work experience. Expect detailed questions about it: why you chose it, what you built yourself, what you'd change.
- Skills are questions too. If your CV says Excel, expect “What's the most complex thing you've done in Excel?”
Try it now: three questions, out loud
About eight minutes, no sign-up needed
- Scenario
- An interview for a role you want. Pick three questions from the list above: “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”, one “tell me about a time” question, and one more.
- Prepare (2 minutes)
- For each, write the answer in a few words and the one example you'll use. Bullets, not sentences.
- Speak (about 1 minute each)
- Answer each question out loud, ideally into your phone's voice recorder.
- Check (2 minutes)
- Listen back. Did your first sentence answer the question? Was there one example, with something you did and something that came of it? Did you stop when you'd finished?
- Retry (about 1 minute)
- Take the weakest of the three and say it again with one change, such as moving your point to the first sentence or cutting the second example.
A practice routine we suggest, not a tested programme.
Common slips, and what to do instead
- Memorising every word. A memorised answer can fall apart if the question is phrased differently. Remember the point and the example; let the sentences come fresh.
- Only adjectives. “Hard-working, dedicated, team player.” Keep one and show it with something you did.
- A long run-up. Starting with background before the point. Say the point first; add background only if it's needed.
- “We” all the way through. In a team project, say what the team did in a sentence, then what you did.
- Going blank. It's fine to say “Let me think for a moment” and take a few seconds. Then start with the simplest true answer you have; you can add to it.
Questions people ask
How many questions should I prepare?
The ten above, plus the follow-ups your CV will raise. Most other questions are variations of these, and the same few examples from your work or studies can answer several of them.
Are the questions different for freshers?
Mostly the same questions, with different evidence. Projects, internships, college responsibilities and part-time work take the place of jobs. Expect more questions about your final-year project and why you chose this field.
Can I use the same example for more than one question?
Yes, as long as you tell it from a different angle each time: what you built for a project question, what went wrong for a difficult-situation question. Try not to use it twice in the same interview.
What if I don't know the answer to a technical question?
Say so plainly, then say how you'd find out or what you do know that's close to it. A clear “I haven't used that, but I've used something similar” is usually better than guessing.
Is it bad to pause before answering?
No. A short pause to think is normal and often makes the answer clearer. A few “ums” are normal too; what matters more is that the answer is easy to follow.
Practise the questions out loud
Bullets on paper are the easy part; the answer you can say clearly is the one you'll give on the day. In Loista, you answer interview questions out loud, including tell me about yourself, strengths and weaknesses, and a difficult situation, then get a score for clarity, structure and delivery with one thing to change, and try again. Add your CV and Loista writes interview questions from it, so you can practise the follow-ups too. Your first 10 practices with feedback are free.
