Many strong engineers lose interviews not on the technical questions but on the simple ones: they talk for too long, forget to say what they personally did, or make their work sound smaller than it really was. The fix is preparation. The same questions come up again and again, so you can plan your answers in English before the day.
The STAR method in one minute
For any "Tell me about a time when…" question, use four steps: Situation (one or two sentences of context), Task (what you had to achieve), Action (what you did, the longest part) and Result (what changed, with a number if you have one). Aim for about two minutes.
The questions
- Tell me about yourself. Not your life story: your current role, one or two things you are proud of, and why this job is the next step. "I'm a backend developer with five years' experience, mostly in Java and AWS. In my current team I led the move from a monolith to services, which cut deployment time from a day to under an hour. I'm looking for a role where I can work more on system design."
- Why do you want to work here? Show you read about the product or the team. Name one specific thing.
- Walk me through a project you're proud of. Problem, your part, the technical choices, the result. Say "I", not only "we".
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with a colleague. They want to see that you can disagree politely and still deliver. End with what you learned.
- Tell me about a mistake you made. Pick a real one, explain how you fixed it and what you changed so it doesn't happen again. A blameless tone works well.
- How do you handle a production incident? Talk through the steps: communicate, stabilise, find the cause, follow up with a postmortem.
- How do you keep your skills up to date? Be concrete: a course, a side project, the last thing you learned.
- What's your biggest weakness? A real, work-related weakness and what you are doing about it. Avoid "I'm a perfectionist".
- How would you design…? Think aloud. Ask about scale and requirements first. "Before I start, can I check how many users we expect?"
- What if you don't know the answer? Say so, then reason: "I haven't used that, but I'd expect it to work like… Here's how I'd find out."
- What are your salary expectations? Give a researched range, or ask about the budget first: "Could you share the range for this role?"
- Do you have any questions for us? Always yes. Ask about the team, how work is planned, or what success looks like after six months.
Useful phrases
- That's a good question. Let me think for a second.
- Could you say a bit more about what you mean by…?
- To give you some context, …
- My role in that was to…
- As a result, we reduced… by 30 percent.
- Looking back, I would…
Common mistakes
- Only "we". The interviewer is hiring you. Say what you did.
- No result. End every story with what changed.
- Too long. Two minutes per story. They will ask if they want more.
- Silent coding. In live coding, say what you are thinking. Silence looks like being stuck.
Prepare the whole journey
Job Interviews in English for IT B1–B2 takes you from CV and recruiter call through behavioural and technical rounds to salary talks and your first 90 days, with a weak and a strong answer for every key moment and 60 common questions. It is part of the English for IT Teams series, together with Writing at Work and IT Vocabulary in Real Life. All three are also in the English for IT Teams online course.
