What is GitHub Copilot, and Why Every Interviewer Is Asking About It

Meera was two rounds into a good interview. The technical questions were going well. She was confident.

Then the interviewer said: "We use GitHub Copilot across our engineering team. How do you use it in your workflow?"

Meera had heard of Copilot. She knew it was an AI tool. But she had never actually used it. She had never needed to. College never asked for it.

She gave a vague answer. The interview ended politely. She did not get a callback.

The job went to someone who could answer that question specifically.

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What GitHub Copilot Actually Is

GitHub Copilot is an AI tool that sits inside your code editor and suggests code as you type.

Think of it this way. When you type on a smartphone, autocomplete suggests the next word. GitHub Copilot does the same thing, but for code. You start writing a function, and Copilot suggests how to complete it. You write a comment describing what you want to do, and Copilot writes the code.

It was built by GitHub in partnership with OpenAI. It has been trained on billions of lines of publicly available code. It understands most programming languages: JavaScript, Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, and many more.

It lives inside VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, and other editors. You see its suggestions in a lighter grey text as you type. You press Tab to accept. You keep typing to ignore.

That is it. It is not complicated. But it changes how fast you can work.

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Why Companies Are Using It

A study by GitHub showed that developers using Copilot complete tasks 55% faster than those without it.

55% faster is not a small number. It means a developer with Copilot can do in four days what used to take six. Over a year, that compounds into a significant productivity difference.

So companies adopted it. Fast. Not as an experiment, but as a standard tool.

Today, in most serious tech companies in India and globally, GitHub Copilot (or a similar AI coding tool) is part of the standard developer setup. Like how every company uses Slack or Jira, Copilot has become infrastructure, not a bonus.

When a company hires a new developer today, they expect that developer to already know how to work with AI tools. Not learn them after joining. Know them before.

That is why interviewers are asking.

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What Copilot Can and Cannot Do

It helps to be clear about this, because overselling Copilot leads to people misusing it.

Copilot is good at:

• Writing boilerplate code that follows predictable patterns
• Completing functions when the pattern is clear
• Generating test cases for existing code
• Translating a comment into working code for simple tasks
• Suggesting imports and common utility functions
• Writing repetitive code much faster than typing it manually

Copilot is not good at:

• Understanding your full project architecture
• Making design decisions for you
• Writing correct code for complex business logic without review
• Replacing the need to understand what the code does
• Debugging subtle errors in your existing system

This matters. A developer who uses Copilot without understanding the code it generates will ship broken things. The skill is not just "using Copilot." The skill is using Copilot and knowing when to trust it and when to question it.

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The Question Interviewers Are Actually Asking

When an interviewer asks "how do you use Copilot in your workflow?", they are not asking you to explain what Copilot is. They know what it is.

They are asking three things underneath that question:

1. Do you actually use it, or have you just heard about it? They can tell the difference immediately. Someone who has used Copilot daily for three months talks about it differently from someone who read a LinkedIn post about it.

2. Do you understand its limitations? Developers who blindly accept every Copilot suggestion are a risk. Developers who know when to trust Copilot and when to write code manually are assets.

3. Are you the kind of person who uses modern tools, or someone who resists them? Companies are building AI-augmented teams. They want people who embrace this, not people they have to convince.

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How to Start Using Copilot Right Now

GitHub Copilot is not free; it has a monthly subscription. But GitHub offers free access to students through the GitHub Student Developer Pack. If you have a college email address, you can apply.

Here is what to do:

Step 1: Get the Student Pack. Go to education.github.com. Apply with your college email. You get free Copilot access among many other tools.

Step 2: Install VS Code if you have not. Copilot works best in VS Code. Install the GitHub Copilot extension from the VS Code marketplace.

Step 3: Open a project you already have. Do not start something new. Open code you already understand. Let Copilot suggest completions. Watch what it does. Accept some suggestions. Reject others. Learn the pattern of when it is right.

Step 4: Try comment-driven development. Write a comment in plain English describing what you want a function to do. Then press Enter and watch Copilot attempt to write it. This is the fastest way to understand what it is capable of.

Step 5: Use it for a week before judging it. Copilot feels slightly awkward for the first few days. After a week, it starts feeling natural. After a month, working without it feels slow.

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What Interviewers Want to Hear

If an interviewer asks about Copilot and you have used it, here is the kind of answer that lands well:

"I use Copilot mainly for completing repetitive patterns: writing test cases, generating boilerplate, and finishing functions where the pattern is clear. I always review what it suggests before accepting. For anything involving business logic or architecture decisions, I write the code myself. Copilot is not reliable enough there yet. But for the right tasks, it probably saves me 30 to 40 percent of the time I used to spend typing."

That answer shows you have used it, you understand its limits, and you think critically about tools. That is what they want to hear.

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Other AI Tools Worth Knowing

Copilot is the most common, but it is not the only one. Here are tools that serious developers are using in 2025:

Cursor. An entire code editor built around AI. More powerful than Copilot for certain tasks. Worth knowing if you work in VS Code.

Claude (by Anthropic). Excellent for explaining code, debugging, writing documentation, and discussing architecture. Many developers use it alongside Copilot.

ChatGPT. Useful for general coding questions, debugging explanations, and learning new concepts quickly. Not as integrated as Copilot but widely used.

Figma AI. For UI/UX designers. Generates design suggestions, auto-fills content, and speeds up component creation.

You do not need to master all of them. But knowing what they are, having tried each one, and being able to talk about how you use them. That separates you from every fresher who only knows Copilot by name.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is GitHub Copilot free for students? Yes, through the GitHub Student Developer Pack. Apply at education.github.com using your college email. You get free Copilot access as long as you are a verified student.

Does using Copilot mean I don't need to learn to code properly? No. Copilot requires you to understand code to use it well. If you accept suggestions you do not understand, you will ship broken code and not know why. The foundation still matters.

Will Copilot write my entire project for me? No. It helps with patterns and repetition. Complex logic, architecture, and debugging still require a developer who understands the problem deeply.

Do all companies use Copilot specifically? Not all. Some use alternatives like Cursor, Amazon CodeWhisperer, or Tabnine. But the underlying skill, knowing how to work with AI coding tools, transfers across all of them.

How do I talk about Copilot in an interview if I've only used it a little? Be honest about your experience level. "I've been using it for a few weeks and I'm still learning the best ways to use it" is a fine answer. What they don't want is someone who pretends to have experience they don't have.