How to Do Mock Interviews Using AI | John's Tips 2024W49

Follow these steps and use my prompt to give yourself constructive interview practise in a mock interview using AI tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT

Need some interview practise?

Want to practise answering contextual questions about your background and CV for real-life roles?

If you didn’t know already, ChatGPT and Perplexity (and other AI tools) are pretty good at role playing - you just need to give them the right prompt.

Before getting to that though, you should update your CV/Resume to be more recent, as you’ll be sharing that with the AI tool.

I have a couple of blog posts that can help with that first.

The Power of Storytelling in Your CV | John's Tips 2024W40

Use ChatGPT to refine your CV | John’s Tips 2024W3

Once you have refined your CV, copy the text below into your AI tool of choice. I’ve tried it on ChatGPT and Perplexity and it works very similar in both. You’ll want to attach your own CV, as well as the job description/role that you are applying for.

If you have the actual job listing printed to PDF and attached with your prompt, that’ll make it work even better.

Sending the below prompt along with those documents will start a conversation with the AI, and it will pretend it’s in an interview situation for the role you have specified.

Note: Replace the <tags> with your own information about yourself and the job you are applying for.

I am a <Level and Role> applying for <types of roles you are applying for> roles in <Country where you want to work>. I would like to practise a mock interview with you.

Please assume the role of a hiring manager for these types of positions and conduct the interview accordingly.

1. Interview Role-Play: Ask me questions as if you were the hiring manager. Stay in character until I tell you to stop.

2. Feedback on Responses: Each time I answer one of your questions, in your response where you are asking the next follow up question please also provide constructive feedback on how I might improve my answer with with the role outlined in mind.

3. Follow-Up Questions: Continue with relevant follow-up questions to simulate a realistic interview experience.

4. CV Context: Assume you have access to my CV (which I have attached) and tailor your questions based on typical expectations for this role.

Thank you for helping me prepare!

I like being polite to AI - you don’t have to add that last part

I also suggest using dictation (speech to text) where you can, to practise actually speaking the answers instead of using the voice assistant or typing. This is good practise for yourself in general, and it has the additional help where you can correct some words the speech to text got wrong.

I have a blog here about that too, how you can turn dictation on if you use a Mac.

Using Mac dictation and Slack's voice notes for added efficiency | John's Tips 2024W13

Here’s a recording of me using the prompt with some of my own experience.

As you can see I’ve asked for extras through the chat. Here’s a list of things you can try with it

• Request revised versions of your own answers

• Change the hiring manager to someone else on the interview panel, like peer PM, Architect, Lead engineer etc.

• Ask for a similar question in a different way

• Ask it to go deeper into a question if it's a good topic for you

• Once you send in revised version, ask to continue the interview

• Ask how to ask a follow-up to a particular question to learn more about the company

That last bullet is a good one. I believe interviews should be more of a conversation, and if you ask them questions showing your interest in a topic and how that topic is dealt with in the company, it will come across much better.

A running theme in all of my posts about careers or job hunting is that you should take your career in your own hands, and these follow up questions should be around things you may have experienced before, and do/don't want to repeat.

For me, I’d rather not work in feature factories using Safe Agile and I never want to go back to quarterly releases ever again.

Hopefully, if you follow these instructions you’ll get plenty of interview practise, but you may also learn a little about yourself and your own story in the process.

Do you need other help on the job hunt or career progression? - See here for other articles and media on this topic.

For my past tips check out my past posts here on Substack or check out the hashtag #JohnsTipOfTheWeek on LinkedIn.

I’d love if you subscribed! I’m trying to build a bit of a following to try and help folks in the industry and make their jobs a little bit easier.