7 Interview Questions You Will Actually Get Asked

There are hundreds of "top interview questions" lists on the internet. Most of them include questions nobody has been asked since 2004. Where do you see yourself in five years? What is your greatest weakness? If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

In reality, most job interviews circle around a small set of questions. The wording changes. The framing shifts depending on the role and the seniority. But the underlying things the interviewer wants to know are remarkably consistent across industries, functions, and company sizes.

This guide covers the seven questions that show up in nearly every interview. Not the exact phrasing you will hear, but the core question behind it, why the interviewer is asking, and how to answer in a way that is honest, specific, and not obviously rehearsed.

1. Tell me about yourself

This is not a warm-up. It is the most important two minutes of the interview. The interviewer is giving you an open canvas to frame the conversation. What you choose to say, and what you leave out, tells them how you think about your own career and whether you understand what this role needs.

The mistake most people make is treating this as a biography. They start at the beginning ("I studied economics at university, then I got a job at...") and walk through their career chronologically. By the time they reach the relevant part, the interviewer has stopped listening.

Start with where you are now, not where you started. Lead with the experience that is most relevant to this role.

A good structure:

• Present: What you do now in one or two sentences. Your current role and the most relevant thing about it.
• Past: One or two highlights from your background that explain how you got here and why those experiences matter for this role.
• Future: Why you are in this interview. What about this role or company connects to where you want to go. One sentence is enough.

Keep it under 90 seconds. Practice it out loud, but do not memorise it word for word. You want it to sound natural, not performed.

2. Why are you interested in this role?

The interviewer wants to know two things: whether you have done your homework, and whether your motivation is genuine. "I am looking for a new challenge" answers neither of those.

A strong answer connects something specific about the role or the company to something specific in your experience or goals. It shows you read the job description carefully and thought about why this particular position at this particular company appeals to you.

What to include:

• Something specific about the role that excites you, tied to work you have done or want to do
• Something about the company that is not just their "About" page reworded. Mention a product, a decision, a market position, a piece of their tech stack. Show you looked beyond the job posting.
• How this role fits the trajectory you are building. Not a five-year plan, just a clear sense that this is a deliberate move, not a random application.

Avoid saying the company is "innovative" or that you are "passionate about their mission" unless you can point to something concrete. Vague enthusiasm reads as flattery.

3. Walk me through a project you are proud of

This question tests whether you can tell a clear story about your work and whether you actually contributed or just watched from the sidelines. The interviewer is listening for your role, your decisions, and the results.

Use a simple structure: situation, what you did, what happened. Not the STAR method (most candidates use it so mechanically that interviewers can hear the framework creaking). Just tell the story naturally.

• Set up the context in two sentences. What was the project, what was the challenge, why did it matter?
• Describe your specific contribution. Not what the team did. What you did. Use "I", not "we", for the parts that were yours. Be precise about decisions you made and why.
• Land on the outcome. Numbers are powerful. "We increased conversion by 18% over three months" is better than "the project was successful". If you cannot measure the result, describe the impact: what changed, who benefited, what was different afterwards.

Pick a project that is relevant to the role you are interviewing for. A backend engineer interviewing for a frontend role should not talk about database optimisation if they have any frontend experience to draw on.

4. Tell me about a time something went wrong

Every interviewer asks some version of this. "Tell me about a failure." "Describe a challenge you faced." "What would you do differently?" They are all the same question: can you own a mistake, and did you learn from it?

The trap is choosing a fake failure. "I worked too hard" or "I cared too much about quality" are not failures. They are humble-brags, and interviewers see through them instantly. Pick something real. A project that missed its deadline. A decision that turned out to be wrong. A miscommunication that caused problems.

The interviewer is not looking for perfection. They are looking for self-awareness and the ability to course-correct.

Structure your answer like this:

• What happened. State the situation briefly and honestly.
• What you did about it. How did you respond when you realised things were going wrong? What did you actually change?
• What you learned. This is the important part. Not a cliche about learning from mistakes, but a specific change in how you work. "Since then, I always run the migration on staging first" is concrete. "I learned to be more careful" is not.

Choose a failure with a genuine lesson, not one with a convenient happy ending. Real failures do not always resolve neatly. The interviewer respects honesty more than a packaged redemption arc.

5. Why are you leaving your current job?

This is a trust question. The interviewer wants to understand your motivation and whether you will leave them for the same reasons in a year. They are also checking whether you talk negatively about previous employers, which is a red flag regardless of how justified it might be.

Good reasons to share:

• You have outgrown the role and there is no room to grow
• You want to work in a different industry, domain, or tech stack
• The company restructured, your team was dissolved, or the project ended
• You are relocating
• You are looking for a different kind of challenge (be specific about what kind)

Reasons to reframe carefully:

• "My manager is terrible." Instead: "I am looking for a team culture where I can have more autonomy and direct impact."
• "The pay is bad." Instead: "I am looking for a role that better reflects my experience and the market." Save compensation details for the negotiation stage.
• "I am bored." Instead: "I have mastered the core challenges in my current role and I am looking for problems that push me to grow again."

Be honest but forward-looking. The interviewer does not need the full story. They need enough to understand your motivation and believe it is genuine.

6. What questions do you have for us?

This is not a formality. It is part of the interview. Saying "no, I think you covered everything" signals low interest. Asking thoughtful questions shows you are evaluating the role as seriously as they are evaluating you.

Good questions to ask:

• "What does success look like in this role after six months?" This shows you are thinking about performing, not just landing the job. The answer also tells you what they actually expect, which might be different from the job description.
• "What is the biggest challenge the team is facing right now?" This gives you insight into the real work, not the polished version. It also lets you respond with how your experience might help.
• "How does this team make decisions?" This reveals the culture far better than asking "what is the culture like?" which will always get a rehearsed answer.
• "What happened to the person who had this role before?" Promoted? Left? Role is new? Each answer tells you something about the trajectory and the environment.
• "What would you want me to focus on first?" Practical and forward-leaning. If they can answer clearly, the role is well-defined. If they struggle, that tells you something too.

Avoid questions about perks, holidays, or remote policies in the first interview unless the interviewer brings them up. Those are important, but they are second-round questions. In the first interview, you want to demonstrate engagement with the work itself.

7. What are your salary expectations?

This question comes up in nearly every process, sometimes in the first call. It is the question candidates dread most, and the one where preparation makes the biggest difference.

The golden rule: do not give a number first if you can avoid it. If the company has a range, ask for it. In several European countries, including the Netherlands, new legislation is pushing employers to share salary ranges in job postings. If the range is published, reference it: "I saw the posted range and it aligns with my expectations. I am happy to discuss specifics once we both have a better sense of the fit."

If pressed for a number:

• Research the market first. Check Glassdoor, LinkedIn salary insights, industry reports, and your network. Know what the role pays in your region.
• Give a range, not a point. "Based on my research and experience, I am looking at something between 55K and 65K, depending on the full package." A range gives room to negotiate without anchoring too low.
• Factor in the full package. Equity, bonuses, pension contribution, remote flexibility, and professional development budget all have value. A lower base salary with strong equity or flexibility might be worth more than a high base with nothing else.

You are not being difficult by asking for the range first. You are being practical. A salary conversation works better when both sides share information.

Before the interview: practical preparation

Knowing the questions is only half the preparation. The other half is logistics and mindset.

• Research the company. Read their recent blog posts, press releases, or product updates. Check LinkedIn for the interviewer's background. Find one specific thing to mention that shows you did the work.
• Prepare your stories. Have three or four project stories ready that you can adapt to different questions. Write them down, then practice telling them out loud. Spoken stories are different from written ones.
• Test the technology. For video interviews, check your camera, microphone, lighting, and internet connection the day before. Not five minutes before.
• Have the job description open. During the interview, refer to specific requirements from the posting. It shows preparation and keeps your answers focused.
• Bring a question list. Write down five or six questions. You will not ask all of them, but having them prevents the blank-mind moment when the interviewer asks "any questions?"

After the interview: what most people skip

Send a follow-up email within 24 hours. Not a generic "thank you for your time" message, but a brief note that references something specific from the conversation. If the interviewer mentioned a challenge the team is facing, your follow-up is a chance to briefly connect it to your experience.

Keep it short. Three to four sentences is enough. The goal is to reinforce the connection, not to write a second cover letter.

If you do not hear back within the timeframe they gave you, follow up once. Politely, briefly. If they gave no timeframe, wait five business days. After two unreturned follow-ups, move on. Your pipeline should have other opportunities in it.

The real preparation advantage

Interview preparation is not about memorising perfect answers. It is about walking in with enough clarity that you can have a real conversation instead of performing a rehearsed script.

When you know the seven questions that are coming, you stop worrying about being surprised and start focusing on being genuine. You can listen to what the interviewer actually asks instead of scanning for the next question to deploy your prepared answer to.

That shift from performing to conversing is what separates candidates who get offers from candidates who give technically correct answers and still get rejected. Interviewers hire people they can imagine working with. The best way to seem like someone worth working with is to actually engage, not to recite.