General Questions
For All Positions
please shortly introduce yourself?
Why do you wanna get a PhD?
Can you tell us about a challenging situation you had at your previous work and how you handled it?
What do you see doing in 5 years?
Note
You can start the first sentence by assuming you got the position.
Position-Specific Questions
why you applied for this specific position?
You must raise specific scientific questions about the topic of interest
The goal is to show you share the same research questions (interests):
- practically this is the expansion of the email you initially sent to say:
- why their lab
- what topic
- if in your email you just showed your background can be a fit, you need to reiterate that