STAR — the structure for every story
- Situation — one or two sentences of context. Don't over-set the scene.
- Task — what you specifically needed to do; the goal/constraint.
- Action — the bulk of the answer: what you did (say "I", not "we"), the options you weighed, the decision.
- Result — the outcome, quantified if possible, plus what you learned.
Spend ~60% on Action
Interviewers score on your decisions. Keep Situation/Task brief, dwell on the Action (the trade-offs you considered and why you chose), and always close the loop with a Result + a lesson. Two minutes per story is the target.
"Tell me about yourself" (90 seconds)
Present → Past → Future:
- Present: "I'm a software engineer at Teleperformance; recently I've been building full-stack products end to end."
- Past: one line of relevant trajectory + 1–2 projects that show range — "I built LandAI, an ML platform in FastAPI/React, and StockStump, a reactive Spring Boot trading app — so I've worked across Python, Java and modern frontends."
- Future: "I'm looking for an SDE2 role where I can own systems with real scale and depth, which is why I'm excited about this team."
Don't recite your résumé — curate the 2–3 things that set up the rest of the interview.
Questions to ask them (have 3–4 ready)
- "What does the path from SDE2 to senior look like here, and what separates the two?"
- "What's the biggest technical challenge the team is facing this quarter?"
- "How do you balance shipping with paying down tech debt?"
- "What does on-call / ownership look like for this team?"
Asking nothing signals low interest; asking sharp questions signals seniority.