🎤 Practise The Interview Before The Interview

You rehearsed your driving test for months. You muttered your wedding speech in the shower for a fortnight.

Then you walk into an interview and hear your own answer to “tell me about a time you dealt with conflict” for the first time ever, live, in the room, opposite the person who decides your next five Sunday nights.

The fix is one setup prompt and two evenings.

The rule this whole guide hangs on: the interview should never be the first time you hear your own answers.

Set the coach up properly

Don’t type “ask me interview questions”. You get twenty questions in a list, which is revision, not rehearsal. The rules are the whole thing.

Nick this one, fill in the blanks:

You're my interview coach for a [JOB TITLE] role at [COMPANY, or the type of company]. Run a practice interview, then debrief me honestly.

The job ad: [PASTE IT]
Me, or my CV: [PASTE IT]
The thing I do under pressure: [e.g. "I ramble when I'm nervous" or "I say 'we' for things I actually led"]. Watch for it and call it out every time.

Rules for the interview:
1. ONE question at a time, then wait. Never dump a list on me.
2. Mix an opener, competency questions, questions drawn from this specific ad, and one curveball.
3. If my answer is vague, don't move on. Push like a real interviewer: "what was YOUR part in that?", "and what was the result?"
4. Never invent experience for me. If my example is thin, say so kindly and ask for a better real one. Do not write me a better fake one, and do not add numbers, dates or results I haven't given you.
5. Be kind, be honest, and don't tell me an answer was great when it wasn't.

After each answer give me: a score out of ten, one thing that worked, one thing to fix, and a tightened version of my answer in MY words, not fancier ones.

After six questions, stop and give me: my three strongest moments, my two most common bad habits, and the single thing to work on before the real interview. Then give me that debrief as a document I can download and read on the morning.

British English, no motivational speeches. Ask your first question when I say "ready".

The line about what you do under pressure matters more than it looks. Tell the coach your specific weakness and it becomes a spotter for the exact thing you do when you are nervous. That is the difference between generic practice and yours.

Three rounds, in this order

1. Typed, at your own pace. Run the prompt above and answer by typing, pressure off. This round is content: digging out the actual stories, remembering the thing from 2023, finding the numbers. Six questions, then redo your two weakest answers. Type the way you’d speak, contractions and half sentences and all. Write polished little essays and you are rehearsing an answer your mouth will never produce.

2. Out loud. Same prompt, in the Claude phone app with voice mode on, answering aloud while you pace about. This round is delivery, and there is a canyon between knowing an answer and saying it. Your first spoken answers will be worse than your typed ones and you will cringe. Good. That cringe was scheduled for the interview. You have moved it to your kitchen, where it costs nothing.

3. Pressure. Two days before the real thing, paste this into the same chat:

Nick this one:

You're the same coach, tougher round, same rules. Interrupt me if I ramble past 90 seconds, be sceptical, and make sure you ask: [the question you're dreading, e.g. "why is there a nine month gap in 2024?"]. Still invent nothing on my behalf. Six questions, then the same debrief and debrief document. Ask me up to three questions before you start.

Put in the one that makes your stomach drop. Interviewers rarely invent new ways to be scary, and a question you’ve answered four times in your kitchen cannot ambush you in the room.

Interview tomorrow and nerves rising tonight

Then skip the ladder. At 9pm the night before, the goal is confidence, not homework.

Nick this one, the ten minute version:

You're my interview coach and I have ten minutes, not an evening. Interview tomorrow for [JOB TITLE]. The ad, if I have it: [PASTE, or delete this line]. Me, in two lines: [e.g. "four years supervising eight people on shift, built the swap rota that killed our sickness-cover chaos, no formal management qualification"].

Give me, in this order:
1. The three most likely questions for this role, one at a time. After each answer, one fix only. No scores, no essays.
2. A strong 30 second answer to "tell me about yourself", built only from what I've told you. Invent nothing.
3. Three smart questions I can ask them at the end.
4. One sentence on why I'm more ready than I feel.
Give me 2, 3 and 4 as one short note I can read in the car.

Keep everything brief. British English. Ask me anything you need first, but only questions that change your answers.

Honestly, the limits

It predicts questions from the ad, it does not know them, so expect surprises. It cannot paper over a real gap: if the job needs a forklift licence you have not got, no polish changes that. And it will not delete your nerves. They will just sit on top of preparation instead of on top of nothing, which changes how they behave.

One warning. Don’t memorise scripts. Learn answers word for word and one interruption derails the recording. Walk in with the story, the number and the result in your head, and let the sentences come out fresh.

Tonight

One out loud round. Six questions. That is it.

Hearing yourself answer even once puts you ahead of nearly every other candidate, because nearly nobody does it.

P.s. that is one interview rehearsed. The Claude Kickstart sets Claude up around your whole search, job hunters playbook included. £47, one weekend.