Behavioural questions — "tell me about a time when..." — are answered with STAR. It stops you rambling, and it stops you forgetting the result.

Step	What it answers	Time	Example
Situation	Where and when	15 sec	Last year I was the only tester on a two-person team at a logistics startup.
Task	What was on you	10 sec	We released weekly, and bugs kept reaching customers.
Action	What you did	60 sec	I wrote a thirty-check smoke test, ran it before every release, and trained the developer to run it too.
Result	What changed	15 sec	Customer-reported bugs fell from about eight a release to two, and we kept the weekly cycle.

In the Action step, say I rather than we. "We" belongs in the situation; the panel is hiring one person and needs to know which decisions were yours.

"Tell me about yourself" has a shape — now, path, why here — in ninety seconds, with no childhood.
"I am in my final year of B.Com at Pune University, and for the past year I have kept the books for two small businesses, around forty invoices a month each.
I started in Excel, taught myself Tally, then basic SQL so I could answer questions without waiting for a developer.
I am here because this role mixes finance operations with real data work, which is exactly what I have been building towards."

Technical rounds: think aloud. Restate the problem, name your assumption, say the trade-off you are making. A reasonable answer with visible reasoning beats a correct answer delivered in silence.

Try it now — record your ninety seconds

1. Write your now, your path and your why-here as three sentences.

2. Record it on your phone, standing, without notes, and stop at ninety seconds.

3. Listen once. Cut every sentence that does not help them decide, then record it again.