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Interview practice prompt

Ten questions traced to your CV and the job description, answers for the three hardest, and a plain list of what you cannot answer.

Tested on 10 candidates paired with jobs asking for things they do not have. It claimed nothing false in any of them.

Copy this

Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, then replace the two placeholders at the bottom with your CV and the job description.

I have an interview coming up. Below is my CV and the job description. Run me
through a realistic practice interview and mark my answers.

You are an experienced interviewer for this role, in this industry. You also
know how modern screening works — structured rubrics, competency scoring, and
the STAR pattern.

Work in three parts.

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PART 1 — THE QUESTIONS THEY WILL ACTUALLY ASK
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Give me **10 questions**, in the order they would realistically come.

For each one:

**Q1. [the question]**
- **Why this comes up:** the exact line in my CV or the job description that
  triggers it. Quote it.
- **What they are really testing:** the competency behind the question.
- **My risk here:** low, medium or high — and if it is not low, say why in one
  sentence.

────────── RULES FOR THE QUESTIONS ──────────

1. **Every question must trace to my CV or the job description.** Quote the line
   that prompted it. If you cannot point at a line, do not ask the question.

2. **At least three must be uncomfortable.** The gap between what they asked for
   and what I have. The short stint. The gap in my dates. The thing I listed but
   barely did. If my CV has an obvious weakness against this job, I need to hear
   that question here rather than for the first time in the room.

3. **Do not ask generic questions.** "What is your greatest weakness" is not
   preparation. If a question could be asked of any candidate for any job,
   replace it with one that could only be asked of me, for this job.

4. **Match the level and the field.** A first job gets "walk me through what you
   did here"; a senior one gets "how did you decide, and what did you give up to
   do it". Ask what someone in this industry would actually ask — not what a
   software interview sounds like, unless this is a software job.

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PART 2 — HOW TO ANSWER THE THREE HARDEST ONES
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Pick the three highest-risk questions. For each, draft an answer.

────────── RULES FOR THE ANSWERS ──────────

1. **Invent nothing.** Every task, number, tool, employer, client and outcome
   must already be in my CV. If my CV does not say I did it, the answer does not
   say I did it. This is the rule that matters most: an invented answer gets
   found out in the follow-up question, and the follow-up always comes.

2. **Where I genuinely lack the experience, say so in the answer.** Do not write
   me a clever dodge. Write the honest version: the nearest thing I have
   actually done, what I would need to learn, and why I am confident I can. An
   interviewer who catches one bluff stops believing everything before it.

3. **Do not invent preparation either.** No courses, tutorials, certifications,
   reading, side projects or "experimenting at home" unless my CV says so. This
   is the one that slips through, because it sounds modest rather than boastful
   — "I have followed some tutorials on it" is still a claim about something I
   did, and "which ones?" is the next question. If I have not touched it, the
   honest answer is that I have not touched it, and what I have done instead.

4. **Use STAR — Situation, Task, Action, Result** — because structured
   interviews and AI scoring are both built to look for those parts. Label them
   so I can see the shape, then give me the version to actually say out loud.

5. **100 to 200 words spoken.** Longer and I lose them, and the point gets
   buried. If an answer genuinely needs more, it is two answers.

6. **Use their words where the work is honestly mine.** If the job description
   calls it "stakeholder management" and my CV calls it "dealing with clients",
   use their phrase — same work, their vocabulary. If it is not my work, their
   words do not make it mine.

7. **Write it as I would say it, not as I would write it.** Contractions,
   shorter sentences, no bullet points in the spoken version. If it reads like a
   document, it will sound like one.

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PART 3 — WHAT I SHOULD BE READY FOR
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**The follow-up questions.** For each of the three answers, the one thing a
sharp interviewer asks next. This is where people fall apart — the first answer
was rehearsed and the second one is not.

**What I cannot answer.** Every requirement in the job description that nothing
in my CV supports. List it plainly. If they lead on one of these, I need to know
before I walk in, not during.

**Two questions I should ask them.** Specific to this job and this employer,
drawn from the job description — not "what does a typical day look like".

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IF THE INTERVIEW IS CONDUCTED BY AI
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Add a short section. Only say what is actually true:

- It is scored against a **rubric of job competencies**, not by counting
  keywords. Packing my answer with terms from the job ad is detected and counts
  against me.
- It cannot glance at my CV the way a person does. **Name the thing rather than
  gesturing at it** — "at my last job I ran the monthly stock count" rather than
  "as you can see in my CV".
- **Structure carries more weight than usual**, because a rubric is looking for
  the parts. Situation, task, action, result, said in that order, out loud.
- **Say the specific word when it is honestly mine.** If the job names a
  particular system, method or qualification and I have used it, say its actual
  name rather than a vague description of it. That is vocabulary, not keyword
  stuffing, and the difference is whether it is true.
- **Reading a scripted answer off a screen is obvious** and it fails. Practise
  the shape of the answer, not the sentences.
- **If the software glitches — audio dropping, a question repeating, the timer
  behaving strangely — email the recruiter afterwards and say so, factually.**
  It is their system failing, not me. Ask to sit it again. This works more often
  than people expect, and reporting a real fault is itself evidence of how I
  work.

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Here is my CV:

[PASTE YOUR CV HERE]

Here is the job description:

[PASTE THE JOB DESCRIPTION HERE]