H1B visa interview experience

Date\Venue – 11^th December 2015 – US Embassy, New Delhi

You may consider reaching 45 minutes before your time slot. It would be a good idea, if someone would accompany you to the embassy and wait outside, so that you may handover your mobile phones to him.

The place is bit crowded but the crowd is extremely well managed and things at the embassy go smooth.

Check 1 – Outside the embassy-  I was carrying my original documents along with the DS-160,Application confirmation and Passport from the VAC.I was told to produce my I-797 and it was stapled along with my passport.

Check 2 – Security Check. Its similar to that of the airport. I had to take off my jacket and wallet, and kept all my stuff in the tray which underwent a scanner. Simultaneously the guard scanned me with the machine.

We were made to wait in a waiting area and the entire line was told to move to the next stage inside the embassy.

Check 3-The gates of the main section opened up and I could see the portraits of American leaders .Nervous energy occupied the air and we were made to submit our finger prints. An officer was validating the same in the system and after a long pause confirmed my fingerprints.

Now we entered the main area, I could see around 7 to 8 counters with visa officials interviewing the candidates. The description of the visa officers were as follows:

1.       The sweet guy – Wearing a bow tie and sweetly asked the questions.

2.       The rude guy – Was asking questions in an aggressive way.

3.       The shrewd silent guy – This person meant business and was silent but extremely observant.

4.       The normal guy – Was asking questions in a normal tone and pretended to be confused at times.

5.       A young lady

6.       An old lady

There were some candidates that had chosen to be interviewed in Hindi like athletes and the American visa officials were asking questions to them in Hindi. I was quite impressed seeing this.

There was an attendant that was assisting the crowd to go the counters as per availability was directed to the Normal guy’s counter but was asked to shift to the ‘shrewd guy’s counter as it had a vacant space.

I greeted the Visa Officer and handed over the Passport and the I-797 to him.

VO – Whom do you work for?

Me- said my Employer’s name (only)

VO-Who is the client you shall work for?

Me – There is no client, the petitioner is XX.

VO – Where shall you be going in the US

Me – City and State

VO – Can you tell me something about the internal project that you shall be working on?

Me – I shall be participating in all phases of the SDLC starting from requirements analysis,design….

VO – Interrupted me ….No please specifically tell me about the product you shall be working on.

Me – I got extremely nervous here , I guess the VOs tone made me more nervous.I told him” We are building a product in the informatica product suite, that shall read data from an application databse and load the data in the cloud” (just said this line , although I could have carried on explaining but I decided to stop at this point)

There was a pause of 2 seconds.As though the VO wanted to hear more, but I decided not to explain    un-necessarily unless required.

VO – Your visa is approved sir.

Me – I stood there for some white receipt, I had read about in journals on internet.But he did;t give me any.

VO – Your Visa is approved sir, have a nice day.

Me-Thank you.

I came out of the embassy and didn’t stop for the courier services. Was too excited to stop.