The General Structure of a Technical Interview

The interview starts before you ever join the call. Take some time to learn who you’ll be speaking with, including their role, background, previous work, and experience at the company. You should not be hearing their career story for the first time during the interview.

Use publicly available information, such as LinkedIn, to understand their professional background. The goal is not to pry, but to come prepared. If you can naturally reference something they have worked on or ask an informed question about their experience moving between companies, it demonstrates curiosity and initiative. Those qualities can make a strong impression, particularly in startup environments where resourcefulness matters.

Treat your introduction as a short, prepared overview rather than an attempt to walk the interviewer through your entire resume. Give them the basic context first: your year in school, where you’re from, what you study, and the work you’ve been doing recently. If they ask you to discuss your resume, focus on the experiences that best demonstrate your technical abilities.

For each project or experience you discuss, be ready to explain what you actually did, what you learned, and what came out of the work. Spend more time on your specific contributions than on describing the project as a whole. You should also be able to explain which parts of the work you found most interesting and where you felt you performed particularly well. Practice this beforehand so your introduction feels natural rather than improvised.

Anything you mention can become a follow-up question. If you bring up a technical project, assume the interviewer may ask you to explain the underlying concepts, your decisions, or the results. At the same time, be careful not to disclose confidential information or violate an NDA. When necessary, prepare by reviewing publicly available information or thinking through how you can describe your work at a high level without revealing sensitive details.

You probably will not have time to discuss everything you've done. In most interviews, a few experiences will receive the majority of the attention, so lead with the projects that are most relevant and meaningful to the position. A clear, confident introduction sets the tone for everything that follows.

At some point, the conversation will usually shift away from your background and into the actual technical assessment. Your interviewer may ask questions about your resume as they go, but eventually you will likely hear something along the lines of, “Alright, let’s move on to some technical questions.”

How much time you reach with at this point depends heavily on how the earlier conversation goes. You might have only 15 minutes remaining, or you could have 40. A lot depends on how much time you spend discussing your experience and how the interviewer chooses to structure the interview.

Once the technical portion begins, the range of possible questions can become extremely broad. You could be tested on something directly related to the position, a fundamental concept from your field, or something seemingly unrelated. Interviewers may intentionally probe how well you think on your feet rather than simply testing memorized knowledge.

That makes this section especially important to prepare for. If technical interviews are a major weakness for you, it can be useful to make your resume discussion more substantial, giving yourself more time to demonstrate the areas where you are strongest. Conversely, if you are comfortable handling unfamiliar technical questions, you can afford to move through your background more quickly.

The interview does not end when the interviewer stops asking questions. In most cases, the final few minutes are yours. When they ask whether you have any questions, you should have something ready to ask.

Use this opportunity to show that you have done your homework. Research the company beforehand and come prepared with several questions that go beyond what could be answered by a quick Google search. You may only have time to ask two or three, so bring more than you expect to use and choose the ones that fit the conversation best.

The strongest questions demonstrate that you understand the company and have thought critically about its work. Ask about challenges the company is facing, decisions it has made, technical or organizational problems it is trying to solve, or how the team approaches difficult problems. Questions like these turn the final few minutes into another opportunity to demonstrate curiosity and genuine interest.

Avoid using this time primarily for questions about compensation, perks, transportation, or other logistical details. Those things may matter, but they rarely distinguish you from other candidates, and the person interviewing you may not even know the answer. Especially at startups and mission-driven technology companies, thoughtful questions about the work itself can communicate that you are interested in contributing, not simply getting the job.