The interview room: what happens in the first ninety seconds

Candidates spend weeks rehearsing answers to expected questions and almost no time on how they enter the room, sit down and respond to the first, deliberately easy questions. That's a mismatch, because the first ninety seconds shape the tone — and often the direction — of the forty-plus minutes that follow.

The opening questions (about your background, hobbies, daily routine) aren't filler. They're calibration: the IO is establishing your natural baseline — how you speak when there's no pressure — so that later, harder questions can be read against that baseline rather than in isolation.