How to explain a project in an interview on java?
I am a software engineer, I get confused about what to answer, where to start, when I am asked this question: "Tell me about your last project?"
I usually start with the problem description, then stating the solution as the project. Project architecture, one line intro about all the modules. By this time the interviewer loses interest or is very desperate to finish quickly and just wants me to jump straight to my module.
Listening 2-3 sentences they guess and ask me 2-3 direct technical questions before wrapping up. I find it difficult to answer these questions as they have not allowed me to fully explain the modules. So I feel they might assume me as a person who has insufficient knowledge about the project or my module.
What's the best way to explain a big project within a few minutes? And how would I know what they are looking for? ( Should I just limit my explanation to their requirement?)
The answer to - how to explain project in interview on java is :
You should just limit your explanation to their requirements. As an interviewer, I am asking this question not to get the full picture of the project, but simply to understand enough to ask you follow-up questions. That's the real point of this question: to see whether you can explain the "why did you do x instead of y?". It's in those follow-up questions that you get to show that you really understood the full project. If you try to show all your understanding up-front, you will get bored looks, as you have already encountered. Also, explaining it up-front only shows that you've been able to memorise a script, not that you really understood the project.
Be especially careful of this with phone interviews, as you will not be able to read their body language. I've performed lots of phone interviews where I asked a simple question and got a 5-minute monologue which I then had to try to interrupt tactfully. At a bare minimum, you should pause at spots and ask something like "would you like to hear more detail on that, or does that give you the basics of what you wanted to know?"