Without an ORDER BY clause, the database is free to return rows in any order. There is no guarantee that rows will be returned in the order they were inserted.
With MySQL (InnoDB), we observe that rows are typically returned in the order by an index used in the execution plan, or by the cluster key of a table.
It is not difficult to craft an example...
CREATE TABLE foo
( id INT NOT NULL
, val VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT ''
, UNIQUE KEY (id,val)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;
INSERT INTO foo (id, val) VALUES (7,'seven') ;
INSERT INTO foo (id, val) VALUES (4,'four') ;
SELECT id, val FROM foo ;
MySQL is free to return rows in any order, but in this case, we would typically observe that MySQL will access rows through the InnoDB cluster key.
id val
---- -----
4 four
7 seven
Not at all clear what point the interviewer was trying to make. If the interviewer is trying to sell the idea, given a requirement to return rows from a table in the order the rows were inserted, a query without an ORDER BY clause is ever the right solution, I'm not buying it.
We can craft examples where rows are returned in the order they were inserted, but that is a byproduct of the implementation, ... not guaranteed behavior, and we should never rely on that behavior to satisfy a specification.