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.
What actually goes wrong early
Over-rehearsed opening answers read as rehearsed, which is itself informative to an experienced interviewer — it suggests you may be less consistent when the question deviates even slightly from the practised version. A natural, slightly imperfect answer given your own way is more useful to you than a polished one that isn't really yours.
Composure over content, at this stage
For the first few minutes, how you speak matters more than what you say: steady pace, eye contact, comfortable pauses instead of filler words. Content precision becomes more important once the interview moves into your academic and career-reasoning questions later on.
The one preparation habit that transfers directly
Mock interviews with unfamiliar interviewers — not just friends or family who already know your answers — are the closest simulation of that early calibration pressure, which is why we run mock panels with rotating assessors rather than the same faculty member every time.