My only window is behind my desk. What do I do?

Close the curtain to remove the backlight and put a lamp in front of you, angled at your face. Any desk or reading lamp works. A lit face against a dim room looks far better than a silhouette against a bright window.

Should I use a virtual background?

Prefer a real plain surface — a wall, a door or a bookshelf. Virtual backgrounds glitch around hair and hands and can look evasive. If the room is genuinely busy, a soft blur is the safer choice.

What if my internet drops mid-interview?

Have the meeting link on your phone and the interviewer's contact details on paper. Rejoin from the phone or hotspot, apologize once in a sentence, and continue. Handling it calmly counts in your favor.

How to ace a video interview from a small apartment

July 16, 2026 · 4 min read

Interviewers are not judging your apartment. They are judging whether they can see you clearly, hear you without strain, and whether you look like someone who prepared. All three are achievable in a studio with a shared wall and a window that faces the wrong way, and almost all of it is free. The candidates who struggle on video are not the ones with small homes; they are the ones who did not test their setup until the call started.

The fifteen-minute setup

Face the light. Put your back to the room and your face toward the window or a lamp. If the only window is behind you, close the curtain and use a desk lamp in front — even a reading lamp angled at your face beats being a silhouette.
Raise the camera to eye level. A laptop on a table points up your nose. Stack it on books or a box until the lens is level with your eyes, and sit far enough back that your head and shoulders fill the frame with a little space above.
Find a plain patch of wall. Any neutral surface works — a door, a blank wall, a bookshelf. Move a chair so the camera sees the calmest angle. If nothing works, a soft blur filter is better than a virtual beach.
Use headphones with a mic. Wired earbuds from a phone are fine. They cut echo from a small room and stop the interviewer hearing themselves.
Kill the noise you can. Close the window, turn off the fan and the fridge if you can hear it, silence your phone, and tell anyone you live with the times you need quiet.

Test like it matters

Open the meeting software the day before. Record a one-minute clip of yourself answering "tell me about yourself" and watch it back. You are checking three things: is your face lit and in focus, is your voice clear at normal volume, and does the background distract? Fix what you find, record again. Then check your internet with a speed test at the time of day the interview will happen — evening bandwidth in a shared building can be very different from morning.

Have a backup for everything

Charge the laptop and plug it in. Know how to join the call from your phone and have the link on it. Keep the interviewer's email or phone number written on paper so you can send a quick message if your connection drops. If your Wi-Fi is unreliable, sit next to the router or use an ethernet cable; if that is impossible, your phone's hotspot is the fallback — turn it on before the call so it is one tap away.

Look at the camera, not the screen

Eye contact on video means looking at the lens, which feels unnatural because the person's face is a few inches below it. Shrink the meeting window and drag it up directly under the camera so your natural gaze is close to the lens. Keep your notes on paper beside the screen rather than in another window, so glancing at them does not read as reading.

Dress for the frame

Wear what you would to an in-person interview at that company, at least from the waist up — and honestly, all the way down, because standing up unexpectedly happens. Solid mid-tone colors read best on camera; fine stripes and bright white can distort. Avoid anything that matches your background.

Small rooms have one advantage

They are quiet and controllable in ways an open-plan office is not. Nobody walks behind you. You know exactly what is in frame. Use that: a tidy corner with one lamp and a plain wall looks more composed than most conference rooms.

During the call

Join three to five minutes early. Sit up, keep your hands visible when you gesture, and pause slightly before answering to allow for lag — it reads as thoughtfulness rather than delay. If something goes wrong — a delivery, a siren, a connection drop — name it briefly and move on. Interviewers work from home too. Composure under a small disruption is a point in your favor, not against.

Afterward

Note anything that bothered you about the setup and fix it before the next round. Most people get one thing wrong the first time and nothing wrong the second. That improvement curve is the whole reason to test early and to treat the room as part of your preparation rather than something to apologize for.