I can answer this from my personal experience attending interviews as well as conducting interviews. I will highlight below some of the important things (listed in order of an interview model) based on which an interview preparation should be considered:
Browse about the company
I know a friend who applied for an internship in Munich and got a web interview call. During the skype call, the first question that the interviewer asked him was to tell what he knows about the company. Unfortunately, my friend (who is technically very strong) failed to prepare for this and the interviewer turned very aggressive after his response and stopped continuing the call. However, he learned his mistake from this experience and now he is working in one of the biggest enterprises in Munich.
So, before appearing either for a web interview or a personal interview, make sure that you spent ample amount of time in getting to know clearly what the company is doing and their business history (for example, when they started, when they merged, who are their business partners and important customers, etc.). I have seen 90% of people applying jobs based on only the positions/job roles and I think it’s normal because the top priority is to get a job. But, the one who is interviewing you is least bothered about your personal stories and for the interviewer, the most important thing is whether you have at least an idea about what the company is doing. Therefore, at least after getting a notification that you are scheduled for an interview, make sure that you give the top priority to this point.
3 “Why ” Questions
The interviewer definitely wants to know whether you are truly motivated in jumping from your current position to their company and if so, what is the exact reason for that. Therefore, try to be honest within yourself and figure out answers for the questions as below and be prepared to answer them confidently without any confusion/doubts since the responses that you give for these questions will help the interviewer to derive some conclusion about your desire to join their company:
Why you want to join this company?
Why you applied particularly for this position?
Why you want to leave your previous company (in case of experienced candidates) ?
Clear understanding about your current role
In 99% of the interview, you will definitely come across a situation where you need to explain your current role/position.
One problem that I have noticed with many people is they know what to do when they go to work daily, but they don’t have an exact understanding about how their work is influencing the business or the team as a whole and how important their role is for the whole business. Therefore, try to spend some time to get a clear idea about what is the purpose of the project or business that you are working for and what is the exact role of you in taking the business forward. In case, you are a graduate and looking for a fresher role, make sure that you know in and out of the final project or thesis work that you completed for your graduation and be prepared to explain the influence/contribution of your thesis work to the area under which you did this work. For example, my thesis work was based on Database join optimisation techniques for a new column-oriented database under development and hence, my work significantly amounted to carry out the implementation of join techniques in the database further.
Subject-based interview questions
Read the requirements of the job for which you are invited for the interview carefully and be prepared to answer questions based on those requirements.
For example, in case you are applying for a developer position and the job requirements had stated that you need to be proficient in python or C++, make sure that you prepare good amount of interview questions based on these languages. You can find enough online sources to prepare such questions. One important thing to remember here is that you need to be aware of how you use these languages in your current role. In case you are not using these languages in your current role, then try to present/prove your past experiences (whether employment or university) with these languages. In addition to this, you need to be prepared for general or basic questions based on algorithms and system design.
Please note that here I have described from a developer’s point of view. But, for any interview, you will definitely have a subject where the company needs you to be proficient (or at least with some hands-on experience) and therefore, you need to be prepared to answer questions based on the respective subject.
Critical near-conclusion questions
Once an interviewer is almost done with his/her interview, most of them want to know how inclined you would be with the company in case they give you an offer. Therefore, be prepared to answer some general questions as below:
What are your expectations from our company/ new role? (Mostly asked after the interviewer explains about what would be your role in their company)
What difference you can bring to your own career if you join our company?
How can you help us with your experience to solve our problems (Mostly asked after assessing your skills and explaining you about the new role)
Explain a situation in your previous experience where you have given solutions to problems similar to what we are facing now (Mostly asked after assessing your skills and explaining you about the new role)
How you measure your own performance regularly and how you would help to improve the business by assessing your own performance?
As you see above, mostly these questions are normally asked when you are almost done with your interview (at least from my experience).
Prepare to ask valid Questions
Most of us would be aware that after any interview, an interviewer would definitely give the candidate some time to ask questions/doubts they have for the interviewer. It should be taken very seriously that you are very much aware that the interviewer is allocating his/her time for giving importance to listen to your concerns. Therefore, it has high chances of affecting the interviewer’s respect for you if the questions that you ask are not valid or does not make any sense or they have been asked just for the sake of asking something. In case, you don’t have any question, then directly tell them that you are clear with their explanation and happy with them. In case you want to ask questions, try to frame most of them based on your interview itself (such as questions about the new role, about what the company is doing, about the team, about the project, etc.) apart from asking general questions such as work location, work timings, salary, etc..
As I mentioned in the beginning, here I have highlighted the points in the order of an interview model. I hope it helps you in case you are preparing for an interview. All the best.