Interview panels repeat themselves. These are the questions that come up again and again in Nigerian interviews, split into the standard ones and the ones that are specific to hiring here.
The ten standard questions
- 1Tell me about yourself.
- 2Why do you want this job?
- 3Why are you leaving your current role?
- 4What are your strengths?
- 5What is your biggest weakness?
- 6Where do you see yourself in five years?
- 7Tell me about a time you handled a difficult customer or colleague.
- 8Tell me about a time you failed. What did you do next?
- 9Why should we hire you over the other candidates?
- 10What do you know about our company?
The ten Nigerian ones
- 1Are you willing to relocate?
- 2Do you have a guarantor?
- 3Have you completed NYSC? Do you have your discharge certificate?
- 4What is your current salary, and what are your expectations?
- 5When can you start?
- 6Are you comfortable with the salary range for this role?
- 7Do you have your NYSC certificate, WAEC result and degree certificate ready?
- 8How would you get to this office every day?
- 9Are you interviewing anywhere else?
- 10Do you have any questions for us?
The three that trip people up
“Are you willing to relocate?”
Answer the real question — will you actually show up in that city? If yes, say yes and name a date. If it depends, say what it depends on: “Yes, for a role at this level. I would need about three weeks to arrange accommodation.” Never say “I can consider it” — that reads as no.
“Do you have a guarantor?”
Normal in Nigerian banking, insurance, fintech and anything handling cash. A guarantor is usually a civil servant or a person of standing who signs for your honesty, sometimes with their own employer's confirmation. Line someone up before you need them, and ask their permission first. If you genuinely do not have one, say what you do have — a previous employer reference, a landlord, a church or mosque leader.
“What are your salary expectations?”
Give a band, anchored on what the role pays in that city, and say it calmly. Full scripts are in how to negotiate salary in Naira.
Five questions worth asking them
- What does success look like in this role in the first six months?
- How is the team structured, and who would I report to day to day?
- What has made previous people in this role struggle?
- How does the company handle performance reviews?
- What are the next steps after today, and when should I expect to hear?
That last one matters more than it looks: it tells you when to follow up, and it gives you a reason to write.
What a good answer looks like
- Why this job? Connect one thing the company actually does to one thing you are good at. Not “I need a job.”
- Why are you leaving? Look forward, not back. “I've gone as far as I can in that team and I want [specific scope]” beats a list of complaints.
- Strengths? Pick two that the advert asked for, and prove each with a number.
- Weakness? One real, non-fatal weakness and the system you built around it. “I used to over-commit. Now I put every request in a tracker and confirm the deadline before I agree.”
- Five years? Show ambition that fits the company. “Running a team like this one, having learned the business properly first.”
- Why should we hire you? Three sentences: what you have done, what this role needs, and the overlap between them.
For “tell me about a time you failed”, pick a real failure that did not harm anyone, then spend most of the answer on what you changed afterwards. Interviewers remember the change, not the failure.
Panel interviews
Nigerian panels are often three to five people: HR, the line manager, sometimes a director. Three practical rules.
- 1Answer the person who asked, then include the room in one sentence at the end. Staring only at the most senior person reads as politics.
- 2Take the glass of water. It buys you three seconds to think, and nobody has ever been marked down for it.
- 3Write down their names as they introduce themselves, and use them once. It is a small thing that makes you memorable.