Answers to the Main Questions / Prepare for an interview

How long should interview answers be?

InsightGuidanceAI amplification

Insight

“Tell me about yourself”: 90 seconds to 2 minutes. A behavioral story: about 2–3 minutes. A weakness answer: under about 90 seconds. If they asked a yes/no, do not tell a three-minute story. When in doubt, stop at two minutes and offer a deeper example.

Guidance

  1. Time yourself out loud once. Reading silently is faster than speech.
  2. Assume about 130 spoken words per minute when a tool counts words.
  3. If a draft is long, cut Situation first, then adjectives.

AI amplification

Optional. Copy this into ChatGPT or a similar tool if you want a first draft. Replace the [PASTE] sections with your own material. The work stays in that tool; we do not save it here.

Prompt to copy

Rules: Do not invent employers, job titles, dates, metrics, team sizes, or outcomes. If something is missing, ask me or write [unknown]. Keep hedges such as "approximately" and "more than" exactly as I stated them. Never turn a qualitative result into a number.

This is a spoken interview answer. Count approximate spoken time at 130 words/minute. Tell me if it is too long for [tell me about yourself | behavioral | weakness]. Suggest cuts without inventing new content.

Target type:
[PASTE]

Answer:
[PASTE]

All answers · Glossary