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Before you open the DS-160 form, keep four documents within arm's reach: your passport, the offer letter from your US employer, your I-797, and your LCA. You will need to pull specific details from each of these as you work through the form. Without them open in front of you, you will be guessing — and guessing is how errors happen.
1. Personal Information Page — home address, mailing address, and social media
The personal information page is the first section of the form. Most of it is factual and comes straight from your passport, so make sure every detail — your name, date of birth, place of birth, passport number, issue date, and expiry date — matches your passport exactly, character for character.
Home address vs. mailing address
This is one of the most common points of confusion I see. Your home address must match a government ID — so it should come from your passport or your Aadhaar card. If your passport address is still valid and current, use that. If the address on your passport is outdated, use the address on your Aadhaar card. Your mailing address, on the other hand, is simply wherever you are currently living. These two fields are asking for two different things, and mixing them up is an easy mistake to make.
Social media handles
The DS-160 form asks two separate questions about social media, and both need careful attention. The first question asks whether you have a social media presence. If you answer yes, a drop-down list of platforms appears. You need to select every platform you have been present on in the last five years and enter the corresponding URL or handle. Once your form is complete, go back and click on every link you entered to confirm it actually leads to your profile — broken or incorrect URLs are a frequent error I catch during reviews.
The second question asks whether you have any other social media presence beyond the platforms listed in the drop-down. If you are on Reddit, Snapchat, or any other platform not shown in that list, you must declare it here. A question I get all the time is: 'I have an account but I haven't used it in years — do I still need to declare it?' The answer is yes. If the account exists and you were present on that platform at any point in the last five years, you declare it. Active or inactive does not matter. Also, make sure the accounts you declare are set to public before you walk into your visa interview.
2. Travel Page — length of stay and who is paying for the trip
The travel page gives the officer a quick snapshot of where you are headed and the scope of your stay. Two fields here trip up a lot of applicants.
The first is length of stay. Many applicants write '3 years' because that is the standard H1B duration. But the length of stay must reflect the actual validity period on your I-797, calculated from your intended travel date. For example, if your I-797 end date is September 2027 and you plan to travel in January 2026, you estimate the number of months between those two dates — roughly 18 months — and enter that figure. Do not default to three years without checking your I-797.
The second common error is in the 'person paying for the trip' field. This does not mean who is buying your plane ticket. It refers to who is sponsoring your stay in the US. The correct answer here is your US employer or petitioner — not 'self'. They are the ones who filed and sponsored your H1B visa.
If you have any previous US travel history, prior visa refusals, or an immigrant petition that has been filed on your behalf, all of that must be disclosed in the travel section. Officers read these fields carefully. If any of these situations apply to you, I strongly recommend having your DS-160 form reviewed by someone who can help you frame this information correctly.
3. US Point of Contact — use your LCA, not a personal contact
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Book a Mock InterviewThe most common mistake on this page is listing a friend, sibling, or relative in the US as your point of contact. For an H1B visa, your US point of contact must be someone from your sponsoring employer. Open your LCA, scroll to the employer information section, and you will find the name, phone number, email address, and office address of the relevant contact person. That is what goes into this section.
4. Work and Education Section — the part officers read most carefully
This is the section I always flag as the highest risk area, and it is where I see the maximum number of mistakes. There are three specific things to get right here.
Align your past roles with your US role
The work descriptions you write for your current and past positions must connect logically to the role you are stepping into in the US. If there is a visible gap or shift between your background and the US job, an officer will question it. I worked with an H1B applicant whose background was in full-stack development — front end, back end, APIs, and integration. His US role included components of cloud and security. At his visa interview, the officer directly asked him how he had landed a role that involved cloud and security when his background did not reflect that. The tricky part? He had actually worked on cloud and security projects, but he had not mentioned them in his DS-160. That omission nearly derailed his application.
Before you fill this section, have a clear conversation with your employer about the scope of your US role. Understand the project, the technology stack, and the responsibilities. Then scan your entire career history and highlight every experience that connects to that role. Make those connections visible in the form.
Write a work description that is the right length
When it comes to the 'briefly describe your duties' field, I see two extremes. Some applicants write two full pages — and since the DS-160 allows no formatting, everything runs together and becomes unreadable. Others write one or two lines that give the officer almost nothing to work with. The right length is around seven to eight lines. Structure it clearly: start with your designation and domain, state your core area of expertise, then list four to five lines covering your day-to-day responsibilities. Mix technical terms with plain English so the description makes sense to an officer who may not have a technical background.
Include education that supports your US role
Officers do look at your educational background to check whether it aligns with the work you will be doing in the US. If your bachelor's degree is in a field like civil or mechanical engineering but your US role is in a technical or IT domain, that difference can be questioned. If you have any additional certifications, diplomas, or courses in the relevant field, include those in the education section alongside your bachelor's degree. They help bridge any gap the officer might otherwise flag.
5. Temporary Work Information Page — use your LCA for location and salary
This page asks where you intend to work in the US. Many applicants enter their employer's office address by default. But if you will actually be working at a client site or a remote location, you need to enter that address — not the employer's headquarters. Your LCA will have a section that specifies your exact place of work. If you are placed at a client location, the LCA will name the client too. Use all of that information here.
The salary field on this page also catches people out. The form asks for your monthly salary, but the figure you will find in your LCA is typically the annual amount. Divide the annual figure by 12 and enter the monthly result. Entering the annual figure in a field that asks for monthly is one of the most straightforward mistakes to avoid — and one of the most common ones I see.
Once your DS-160 is done, start preparing your interview answers
The work description you build for your DS-160 form becomes the foundation for your visa interview. Once you have structured your roles on paper, you need to think about how you will speak to them in the room. Questions like 'Why only you for this role?', 'Why can't an American do this job?', and 'Why do you want to work in the US?' are standard H1B interview questions, and your answers need to connect directly back to what you have written in your DS-160. If you want help structuring those answers and running through mock interviews, that is something I work on with applicants one-to-one — the link to book a session with me is on this site.
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