Start one
- Open Interviewing in the sidebar and click New practice interview.
- Pick the job. Jobs at Screening, Interviewing or Offer are listed first. For a role you have not saved, choose Another role… and type it in.
- Pick the type: recruiter screen, behavioral, hiring manager, technical, system design, or case or product sense.
- Click Start interview. The interviewer introduces themselves and asks the first question.
The interviewer has read the posting and your resume. They ask one question at a time and follow up when an answer is thin. They sit at the top of the conversation, like the other side of a call, with a photo, their name and what they are doing: listening while you type, thinking, then speaking. To practice the same role again, click its card on the Interviewing page. New, unfinished and past sessions →
Read the question
When the interviewer sets a new problem, it comes in one card: the question in bold at the top, then the Setup (the situation) and the Goal (what a good answer achieves) under it. Read the goal twice. Most weak answers solve a different problem.
Ask before you answer
Just above your answer box, Need a hint? holds help for the question on the table. Click it to open it. Ask before you answer has the clarifying questions a strong candidate would ask first. Tap one and it goes to the interviewer straight away, as your message. Anything you had typed stays in the box. Ask anything else you would want to know too. How to approach it has a tip or two.
The interviewer answers like a real one: with concrete numbers and facts about the problem, and they stay the same for the whole interview. If it is something you should decide, they will ask you to state an assumption. The hint starts folded to one line that says what is inside. Click it again to fold it away.
Pick a framework
A framework is a simple order for a strong answer. For each question, Pick a framework in the hint suggests the two or three that fit it best, each with a line on why. The first is marked Best fit. The suggestions stay the same for that question, however often you open the hint.
Pick one and its steps show in the hint. They also go on your whiteboard as a column of notes joined by arrows, to the right of anything you have drawn, so nothing of yours is covered. Pick a different one and it takes the first one's place. Gancho remembers your pick for that question.
Move the notes, write on them or delete them like anything else on the board. Undo takes them off again. The interviewer sees them as part of your whiteboard.
Behavioral and hiring manager interviews suggest STAR, CAR or SOAR. Case and product sense can suggest CIRCLES, users to metrics, jobs to be done, estimation for "how many" questions, or goal to guardrails for metrics questions. System design has a full design scaffold and a shorter four-part version. Technical goes restate, examples, approach, complexity, edge cases. A recruiter screen covers why this role, why you, and logistics.
Get help with one part
Stuck on one step? Click Help with under it, for example Help with identify customers. A short hint for this question appears under that step: questions to ask yourself, what a strong answer covers, and one angle to explore. It coaches; it never writes your answer. You can also type what you need, like "help me with the API", and click Ask.
Coach notes
After each of your messages, a short Coach note appears above the interviewer's reply, in a soft gray note. The newest one is open; click an older one to read it again. It says what you did well or what you have not covered yet, for example "Good, you asked about scale first. You haven't covered false positives yet." The interviewer stays in character; the notes are only for you.
Type or speak
Type your answer and press Enter to send it (Shift+Enter starts a new line). Or click the microphone next to the box and say it out loud, the way you will in the real interview. Gancho turns your words into text and tells you how you came across. Speaking your answers →
Sketch on the whiteboard
The right side is a whiteboard. Draw boxes, arrows and labels the way you would on a real one. It saves as you draw.
The interviewer sees it. Every time you send a message, they get a list of what is on the board (the labels, and which arrows connect what). When the board has changed, or you say something like "take a look at my diagram", they also get a picture of it. So they can ask about the box you just added, by name.
The interviewer draws too
When it helps, the interviewer sketches on the whiteboard in blue, marked Interviewer: the starting pieces of a design problem, a note beside one of your boxes, an arrow between two of them, or a ring around something they want to ask about. Their drawing goes beside yours, never over it, and the conversation says The interviewer drew on the whiteboard.
Move, change or delete their shapes like your own. Undo takes a drawing off. They never draw the answer for you.
Get feedback
Click End and get feedback whenever you are ready. It takes about half a minute. You get a score out of 100 with a verdict, what worked, what to work on, a note on your whiteboard if you drew, How you spoke if you spoke any answers, and stronger versions of some of your answers, written from your own experience. The transcript, with the coach notes, stays underneath.
Practice again, under the feedback, starts the same interview fresh.
