Tell me about yourself
This is not an invitation to narrate your biography, and it is not small talk - it is the question that sets the frame for the whole conversation. Use a present-past-future shape and keep it to about 90 seconds.
- ✓Do not recite your name, degree, hobbies and family details in a list - that is a form, not an answer.
- ✓Do not exceed two minutes. Long answers here read as poor judgement about what matters.
- ✓Do include one concrete detail with a number or an outcome. It gives the interviewer something to ask about.
Tell me about yourself.
Answer in three moves. Present: who you are right now in one line - 'I'm a final-year computer science student at ___, focused on backend development.' Past: the one or two experiences that got you here, with a specific outcome - a project, an internship, a competition. Future: what you want next, connected to this role. Then stop. Silence invites the interviewer to pick a thread, which is exactly what you want, because you chose the threads.
Walk me through your resume.
The same shape, but chronological and anchored to the resume itself, so the interviewer can follow along. Spend the most time on the item most relevant to this role, and give one sentence to anything you do not want probed - you control the emphasis, and interviewers usually follow it.
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Strengths and weaknesses
The strengths half is easy and rarely decisive. The weaknesses half is where offers are actually lost, in two opposite directions: the humblebrag ('I work too hard') and the disqualifier ('I struggle to meet deadlines'). What lands is a real but bounded weakness plus the specific thing you are doing about it.
What is your greatest strength?
Name one strength relevant to the role and prove it with a short example. 'I'm persistent with debugging - during my project a race condition took me three evenings to isolate, and I worked through it by logging state at each step rather than guessing.' One strength with evidence beats three adjectives.
What is your greatest weakness?
Pick something real, professional and improvable, then show the correction in progress. 'I used to over-engineer solutions - I'd build for cases nobody asked for. On my last project I started writing down the actual requirement first and checking my design against it, which cut my build time noticeably.' The structure is: honest weakness, concrete consequence, the specific habit you changed.
What should you never say as a weakness?
Anything that is the job ('I'm not good with deadlines' for any delivery role), anything about integrity or teamwork, and any fake weakness like perfectionism or working too hard - interviewers hear those daily and read them as evasion.
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Why this company, and why this role
This question tests whether you will stay. Generic praise for the brand answers nothing, because it would apply to any of their competitors. Spend fifteen minutes before the interview finding one specific, true reason.
- ✓Read the company's own careers page and one recent piece of news or a case study - then reference it specifically.
- ✓Connect it to something you have actually done, so the interest is evidenced rather than claimed.
- ✓Mention the work, not the perks. 'I want to work on large-scale delivery projects' lands; 'good salary and work-life balance' does not.
- ✓For service companies, saying you want breadth of client exposure and structured training is both true and welcome.
- ✓Never say 'I'll take anything' - it answers the retention question in the worst possible way.
Why should we hire you?
Match yourself to the requirement, briefly and without arrogance: the skill they need, your evidence for it, and your willingness to learn the rest. 'The role needs someone who can write clean backend code and pick up your stack quickly. I've built two Spring Boot projects end to end, and I learnt Spring for the second one from scratch in three weeks.' Claim competence and trajectory, not superiority over other candidates.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Answer in terms of capability, not job titles - and keep it inside their world. 'I'd like to be the person who owns a module end to end and mentors juniors on it.' Saying you plan to do an MBA, move abroad or start a company answers the retention question badly, even if it is true.
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Related reading
Behavioural questions: use STAR
'Tell me about a time when...' questions are scored on structure as much as content. STAR keeps you from rambling: Situation (one sentence of context), Task (what was required of you), Action (what you specifically did), Result (how it turned out, ideally with a number). Prepare four stories and you can answer almost any behavioural question by re-framing one of them.
- ✓Story 1 - a conflict or disagreement you handled inside a team.
- ✓Story 2 - a failure or mistake, and what you changed afterwards.
- ✓Story 3 - a deadline or pressure situation you delivered under.
- ✓Story 4 - something you learnt quickly from scratch.
- ✓Say 'I' when describing your action. 'We' hides your contribution, and interviewers notice.
Tell me about a time you failed.
Pick a real failure with a bounded cost, own your part without blaming teammates, and finish on the change you made. 'I led our mini-project's database design and didn't index the main query table, so the demo lagged badly. I fixed it that night, and since then I check query plans before any demo.' Claiming you have never failed is the worst available answer.
How do you handle conflict in a team?
Describe a process rather than a personality trait: hear the other position fully, separate the technical question from the personal friction, and settle it against a shared criterion - the requirement, the deadline, or a quick test. Then give the example.
How do you handle pressure and deadlines?
Name your actual method - splitting the work into checkpoints, cutting scope early rather than late, or flagging slippage to the team the moment you see it - then evidence it with one deadline you met and how. 'I work well under pressure' with no method behind it is an empty claim.
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Salary, relocation and the awkward questions
These feel risky but are mostly logistical checks. Freshers with a standard campus package have little to negotiate, so the goal is to sound reasonable and informed rather than to bargain.
What are your salary expectations?
For a fresher role with a published package, say you are comfortable with the standard structure for the role and more focused on the learning and growth at this stage. If pressed for a number, give a range you have actually researched for that role and city, and add that you are flexible for the right opportunity. Do not invent a figure on the spot.
Are you willing to relocate?
Answer honestly and specifically. If yes, say yes plainly - hedging on this question is a common reason freshers get filtered. If you have a genuine constraint, state it with the reason and any flexibility you do have, rather than saying yes and withdrawing later.
Are you comfortable with the service agreement or bond?
Ask what the terms are if you do not know them, then answer. It is entirely reasonable to say you are comfortable with a standard training-period agreement and would want to read the terms before signing - that reads as diligence, not reluctance.
Do you have any offers from other companies?
Be honest but brief. Having other offers is not a problem; being evasive is. If you do, say so without turning it into leverage. If you do not, say you are interviewing in your placement season, which is expected.
Why is there a gap in your academics, or a backlog?
State the reason in one sentence without over-explaining, then move immediately to the recovery: what you did about it and where you stand now. Interviewers are checking whether you handle setbacks, not looking for a confession.
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Related reading
Your turn: questions to ask them
Almost every HR round ends with 'do you have any questions for us?', and 'no, everything is clear' wastes the one moment where you get to show genuine interest. Have two ready, about the work rather than the benefits.
- ✓What does the first six months look like for someone in this role?
- ✓How is the training period structured, and what is expected by the end of it?
- ✓What does a strong first-year performer here do differently?
- ✓Which teams or technologies would I most likely be placed with?
- ✓Avoid asking about salary, leave policy or working hours in the first round - those come at offer stage.
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The mistakes that cost offers
- ✓Memorised answers delivered word-for-word. Prepare the structure and the examples, not the sentences.
- ✓No specifics. Every claim about yourself should carry one concrete detail an interviewer could ask about.
- ✓Criticising a college, teacher or previous employer. It reads as a preview of how you will talk about them.
- ✓Overclaiming a skill on your resume. One follow-up question exposes it, and it taints everything else you said.
- ✓Low energy and no eye contact. In an HR round, how you say it is a substantial part of what is being assessed.
- ✓Not knowing what the company does. It is a ten-minute fix and its absence ends interviews.
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