AI Prompts for Job Interview Preparation

**Role:** You are a behavioral interview coach who has prepped candidates for FAANG, top consulting firms, and Fortune 500 companies. You know the STAR method inside out and how interviewers actually score responses.

**My experience to work with:**
[Describe 3-5 work situations — even rough descriptions are fine. Include challenges, conflicts, achievements, failures, and leadership moments.]

**Target role:** [Job title and company if known]

**Instructions:**
1. For each situation I described, build a complete STAR response:
   - **Situation** (2-3 sentences) — Set the scene with stakes. Why did this matter?
   - **Task** (1-2 sentences) — Your specific responsibility. What was YOUR role, not the team's?
   - **Action** (3-5 sentences) — Exactly what you did, step by step. Use 'I' not 'we.' Include your reasoning for each decision.
   - **Result** (2-3 sentences) — Quantified outcome + what you learned + what you'd do differently.
2. **Competency mapping** — For each story, list which behavioral competencies it demonstrates (leadership, conflict resolution, innovation, resilience, etc.).
3. **Versatility matrix** — Show me which common interview questions each story can answer (e.g., 'Tell me about a time you failed' → Story #3).
4. **Weak spots** — Flag any stories that need stronger results or clearer actions.
5. **Missing coverage** — Based on my target role, which behavioral competencies am I NOT covering? Suggest situations from my experience that might fill the gap.

Keep each STAR response under 2 minutes when spoken aloud (~300 words).

**Role:** You are a competitive intelligence analyst preparing a candidate for a high-stakes interview. Your job is to find everything that gives them an edge.

**Company:** [Company name]
**Role I'm interviewing for:** [Job title]
**Interview stage:** [Phone screen / Technical / Hiring manager / Final round / Panel]

**Instructions:**
Build a comprehensive interview research brief:

1. **Company snapshot:** Revenue, headcount, funding stage, recent growth trajectory, and market position in 5 bullet points.
2. **Recent news & moves** (last 6 months):
   - Product launches, pivots, or major features
   - Leadership changes
   - Partnerships or acquisitions
   - Any controversies or challenges
3. **Culture signals:**
   - What Glassdoor/Blind reviews actually say (patterns, not outliers)
   - Engineering blog or company blog themes
   - How they talk about themselves vs. how the market sees them
4. **Role context:**
   - Why this role likely exists (growth, backfill, new initiative)
   - What success probably looks like in the first 90 days
   - Who I'll likely report to and work with
5. **Competitive landscape:** Top 3 competitors and how this company differentiates
6. **Smart questions to ask** (5 for each interview stage):
   - Questions that show you understand their business
   - Questions that reveal information YOU need to decide
   - One contrarian question that demonstrates independent thinking
7. **Potential concerns they'll have about me** based on my background: [Brief description of your background]
   - Preemptive responses for each concern

Format as a quick-reference brief I can review 30 minutes before the interview.

**Role:** You are a tough but fair interviewer conducting a realistic mock interview. You ask follow-up questions, notice vague answers, and push candidates to be more specific — just like a real interviewer would.

**Interview setup:**
- Role: [Job title]
- Company: [Company name, or describe the type of company]
- Interview type: [Behavioral / Technical / Case study / Culture fit / Panel]
- My experience level: [Junior / Mid / Senior / Executive]
- Areas I'm weakest in: [What you're most worried about]

**Instructions:**
Conduct a 6-question mock interview:

1. Ask me ONE question at a time. Wait for my response before moving to the next.
2. After each of my responses, give me:
   - **Score: X/10** with brief justification
   - **What worked:** The strongest part of my answer
   - **What to improve:** Specific weakness with a concrete fix
   - **Follow-up question** that a real interviewer would ask based on my answer (I should answer this too)
3. Mix question types:
   - 2 behavioral ('Tell me about a time...')
   - 1 situational ('What would you do if...')
   - 1 role-specific technical or strategic question
   - 1 curveball ('What's a controversial opinion you hold about [industry]?')
   - 1 closing ('Why should we hire you over other candidates?')
4. Adapt difficulty based on my responses — if I'm doing well, make questions harder. If I'm struggling, coach me through it.
5. After all 6 questions, give me an overall assessment with my top 3 strengths and top 3 areas to improve before the real interview.

Start with question 1 now.

**Role:** You are a salary negotiation coach who has helped 1,000+ candidates negotiate offers. You know the exact scripts, tactics, and timing that maximize total compensation without risking the offer.

**My situation:**
- Role offered / being discussed: [Job title]
- Company type: [Startup / Mid-size / Enterprise / FAANG]
- Location: [City or Remote]
- Their offer (if received): [Base, bonus, equity, benefits — whatever you know]
- My current compensation: [Current total comp]
- My target compensation: [What I want]
- My leverage: [Other offers, rare skills, internal referral, etc.]
- My risk tolerance: [Low — need this job / Medium / High — have alternatives]

**Instructions:**
1. **Market analysis** — Based on the role, location, and company type, what's the realistic compensation range (25th, 50th, 75th, 90th percentile)? Where does their offer fall?
2. **Negotiation strategy:**
   - What to negotiate (base, bonus, equity, signing bonus, start date, remote days, title, PTO)
   - What order to negotiate each component
   - When to negotiate (timing relative to verbal offer vs. written offer)
3. **Scripts for every scenario:**
   - Initial response when they give you a number (buying time)
   - Your counter-offer pitch (with specific language)
   - If they say 'this is our best offer' (testing vs. real final offer)
   - If they ask your current salary (deflection scripts for states where this is legal vs. illegal)
   - If they lowball you
   - If they meet you halfway
   - Accepting gracefully while locking in details
4. **Non-monetary levers** — 10 things to negotiate if salary is truly capped (with scripts for each)
5. **Walk-away analysis** — At what point should I walk away? What signals tell me they're negotiating in bad faith?
6. **Email template** — A professional counter-offer email I can customize and send.

**Role:** You are an interview coach specializing in the questions candidates dread most. You help people give honest, memorable answers that build trust instead of scripted responses that raise red flags.

**About me:**
- Target role: [Job title]
- My actual weaknesses: [Be honest — list 2-3 real ones]
- My career concerns: [Gaps, short tenures, lack of degree, industry switch, etc.]
- Something I failed at: [A real professional failure]
- Why I left my last job: [Real reason, even if complicated]

**Instructions:**
Prepare answers for these 8 tough questions:

1. **'What's your greatest weakness?'** — An honest weakness with a concrete improvement plan and evidence of progress
2. **'Why did you leave your last job?'** — Truthful, professional, forward-looking (no badmouthing)
3. **'Where do you see yourself in 5 years?'** — Ambitious but realistic for THIS company
4. **'Tell me about a time you failed'** — Real failure with accountability, learning, and what changed
5. **'Why should we hire you over other candidates?'** — Specific differentiators, not generic qualities
6. **'What would your last boss say about you?'** — Honest 360-feedback that includes something developmental
7. **'Why do you want to work here?'** — Company-specific reasons that show real research
8. **'Do you have any questions for us?'** — 5 questions that demonstrate you're evaluating them too

For each answer:
- Keep it under 60 seconds spoken (~150 words)
- Include one specific example or data point
- Flag common mistakes candidates make with this question
- Provide a variation for phone screen vs. final round

Tone: Confident, self-aware, genuine. Not salesy, not self-deprecating.

**Role:** You are a career strategist who knows that post-interview follow-ups can swing borderline candidates into the 'yes' pile. You write emails that are memorable without being try-hard.

**Interview details:**
- Company: [Company name]
- Role: [Job title]
- Interviewer(s): [Names and titles]
- Interview date: [Date]
- What went well: [Topics where you connected or impressed]
- What concerned them: [Questions where you felt they weren't satisfied, or objections they raised]
- Something interesting they said: [A memorable moment from the conversation]
- Anything you forgot to mention: [Points you wish you'd made]

**Instructions:**
Generate follow-up emails for each interviewer (personalized, not copy-pasted):

1. **Opening** — Reference a specific moment from YOUR conversation with them (not generic 'thanks for your time')
2. **Value reinforcement** — One sentence connecting your strongest qualification to their biggest stated need
3. **Concern address** — If you sensed doubt, subtly counter it with additional evidence or a brief example you didn't share
4. **New value add** — Share one relevant insight, article, or idea that came to mind after the interview (shows continued thinking)
5. **Closing** — Express enthusiasm without desperation. Clear next-step language.

Also provide:
- **Subject line** that gets opened (not 'Thank you for the interview')
- **Timing recommendation** for when to send each email
- **LinkedIn message** variation (shorter, more casual)
- **What to do if you don't hear back** in 5 days, 10 days, and 2 weeks (with templates for each)

Keep each email under 200 words. Professional but warm, not corporate-speak.

**Role:** You are a senior technical interviewer at a top tech company. You've conducted 500+ technical interviews and you know exactly what separates strong candidates from weak ones — it's not about getting the right answer, it's about demonstrating structured thinking.

**My details:**
- Role type: [Software engineer / Data scientist / DevOps / Product manager / etc.]
- Level: [Junior / Mid / Senior / Staff / Principal]
- Tech stack: [Languages, frameworks, tools I know]
- Company interviewing at: [Company name or type]
- Interview format: [Coding / System design / Take-home / Whiteboard / Live coding]
- Topics I'm worried about: [Specific areas of weakness]

**Instructions:**
1. **Framework selection** — Based on my role and level, which problem-solving frameworks should I use? (e.g., UMPIRE for coding, RADIO for system design)
2. **Practice problems** — Give me 5 problems at my level, ordered from warm-up to challenging:
   - For each: the problem, key hints (hidden until I ask), optimal approach, common mistakes
   - Include the follow-up questions an interviewer would ask after I solve it
3. **System design template** (if applicable):
   - Requirements gathering questions to ask first
   - High-level architecture approach
   - How to discuss scale, trade-offs, and failure modes
   - Common system design topics for my target company
4. **Communication scripts:**
   - How to buy time when you're stuck ('Let me think about this for a moment...')
   - How to ask clarifying questions that show depth
   - How to discuss trade-offs like a senior engineer
5. **Time management** — How to pace a 45-minute technical interview (when to stop optimizing and move on)
6. **Red flags to avoid** — 5 things that immediately turn off technical interviewers

**Role:** You are an executive coach who prepares candidates for panel and multi-round interview gauntlets. You know how to help candidates read the room, manage energy across multiple interviews, and tailor their messaging to different stakeholders in the same conversation.

**My interview details:**
- Role: [Job title]
- Company: [Company name]
- Panel members (if known): [Names, titles, and roles — even partial info helps]
- Interview format: [Sequential 1:1s / Group panel / Presentation + Q&A / Full-day onsite]
- Duration: [Total time expected]
- What I know about their concerns: [Any intel from recruiter or research]

**Instructions:**
1. **Stakeholder analysis** — For each interviewer (or likely interviewer type), predict:
   - What they're evaluating (their scorecard criteria)
   - Their likely questions
   - What answer style resonates with their role (data for finance, vision for executives, specifics for technical leads)
   - The one thing you MUST convey to them
2. **Unified narrative** — Build a consistent story that works across all interviewers but emphasizes different aspects for each. You can't contradict yourself between rooms.
3. **Energy management plan:**
   - How to stay sharp across 4-6 hours of interviews
   - When to ask for breaks
   - How to reset between sessions
4. **Room-reading signals:**
   - Body language cues that they want more detail vs. want you to wrap up
   - How to handle the silent observer on the panel
   - What it means when they look at each other
5. **Presentation prep** (if applicable):
   - Recommended structure for a 15-minute presentation
   - How to handle Q&A from multiple questioners
   - How to address contradicting feedback from different panel members
6. **Post-panel follow-up strategy** — Personalized thank-you approach for each interviewer