Interview Preparation: Practice Sessions and the Q&A Document

preparAItor gives you two complementary ways to prepare for a real interview: a static Interview Q&A document generated alongside your application documents, and the Interview Practice page, where an AI runs a full mock interview with you — typed or spoken — and scores your performance afterwards. This guide walks you through both, how they differ, and how to use them together.

Before You Start

Prerequisites

• An uploaded, parsed CV (Upload your CV)
• A saved job in the app (Add job details)
• For the live sessions: the Interview Practice page in the app's main navigation

The Two Preparation Channels at a Glance

Interview Q&A document

• Format: Static document (PDF on Pro and Premium; DOCX also on Pro and Premium; TXT on Premium)
• Delivered via: Normal document generation, together with your cover letter and email
• Availability: Pro and Premium plans only
• Output: 20 tailored questions with suggested answers

Interview Practice live sessions

• Format: Real-time chat — answer by typing or speaking
• Delivered via: The dedicated Interview Practice page
• Availability: Every account gets 2 free lifetime sessions (1 Coaching + 1 Practice), on any plan. Beyond those, sessions cost 150 credits each and require a plan that includes interview practice — Pro and Premium.
• Output: Full mock interview plus an AI-scored Session Summary

Channel A: The Interview Q&A Document

What It Is

When you generate application documents on a Pro or Premium plan, you can include an Interview Q&A document in the output. It contains exactly 20 questions tailored to the specific job and your CV, each with:

• A suggested answer written from your real CV evidence
• 2 to 4 key points to anchor your response
• A category label so you know what kind of question it is

Question Categories

The 20 questions are distributed across 8 categories:

• Role & motivation — why this job, why this company
• Company culture — fit with how the employer works
• Experience — past roles, projects, accomplishments
• Technical — skills and knowledge specific to the job
• Behavioral (STAR) — how you've handled situations before
• Situational — how you'd approach hypothetical scenarios
• Gap/weakness — anything missing or unusual in your profile
• Closing — your own questions for the interviewer

How to Use It

1. Read all 20 questions once, end to end.
2. Mark the ones you find hardest.
3. Rewrite a few suggested answers in your own words so they sound natural when spoken.
4. Take the weak spots into an Interview Practice session and drill them live.

Channel B: Interview Practice Live Sessions

This is the main preparation tool. The AI interviews you in a real-time chat, then produces a scored summary of how you did.

Session Modes

When you set up a session you pick a Mode:

• Practice — "Realistic interview — no feedback, no hints." The AI plays the interviewer and stays in character from the first question to the last. You get honest interview pressure, and all feedback arrives afterwards in the summary. Pick this when you want to simulate the real thing.
• Coaching — "Supportive coaching — detailed feedback after every answer." The AI acts as a coach: after each of your answers it tells you what worked and how to improve before moving on. Pick this when you're still building your answers.

A common path: start with Coaching to learn, then switch to Practice to test yourself.

Cost and Availability

• A session is 15 exchanges (one AI question, one answer from you, fifteen times) and costs 150 credits from your unified credit pool.
• Every account gets 2 free lifetime sessions: 1 Coaching and 1 Practice. When a free slot is available, the setup screen shows a FREE badge and "Free — no credits will be used"; otherwise it shows "Cost: 150 credits".
• Beyond the two free sessions, running sessions requires a plan that includes interview practice: Pro (1500 credits/month) or Premium (4000 credits/month). On Free, the two lifetime sessions are all you get — upgrade for more.

Starting a Session: The Setup Wizard

On the Interview Practice page, click New Session (or Start your first session). The Prepare your interview wizard has three steps:

1. Select CV — pick which of your parsed CVs the interviewer should know about.
2. Select Job — pick a saved job, or add and analyze a new one on the spot.
3. Configure — choose:
   • Mode: Practice or Coaching
   • Difficulty: Easy, Medium, or Hard
   • Focus: Behavioral, Technical, or Mixed
   • Language: English, German, French, or Italian
   • For German sessions, a Swiss orthography toggle (ss instead of ß), pre-set from your account settings

Then click Start Interview. Before the first question, a short briefing screen explains the format — realistic behavior and no hints in Practice ("Ready for your interview?"), question-by-question feedback in Coaching ("Welcome to your coaching session!"). Confirm with I'm ready (Practice) or Let's go (Coaching).

During the Session

• The chat header shows your progress through three phases: Warming up → Main questions → Wrapping up.
• Type or speak — switch any time mid-session. Typed answers must be between 3 and 2,000 characters.
• The session ends after 15 exchanges with a warm closing from the interviewer; the detailed scorecard is generated separately right after.
• You can click End Session at any point. If you leave a session unfinished, it stays Active in your session list and you can pick it up later with Continue (X remaining) — finishing your unused exchanges costs nothing extra.

Voice Answers

• Click Start recording and speak your answer. Recordings run up to 90 seconds, with an on-screen warning when 15 seconds remain; very short clips (under 3 seconds) can't be sent. You can pause and resume while you think.
• Click Stop & review to listen back, then Send answer — or Re-record if you want another take.
• Your answer is transcribed and treated exactly like a typed answer. Audio only — no camera or video is ever used.

The Session Summary

After the session ends, the Session Summary appears (it takes a few seconds to generate). It includes:

• Overall Score out of 100, with a level badge: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, or Expert
• Skills Breakdown — a radar across five dimensions: Technical Competence, Communication, Confidence, Problem Solving, Behavioral
• Strengths — what worked, drawn from your actual answers
• Areas to Improve — specific, concrete feedback
• Key Insight — the single most important takeaway
• Recommendations — concrete things to change before the real interview
• Next Steps — the focus areas a follow-up round would target

Note: a summary is only generated if the session had at least 5 exchanges. Shorter sessions keep the conversation transcript but skip the scorecard.

The Targeted Follow-Up Round

On a completed session, you'll see Continue with a targeted follow-up · 150 credits. This starts another 15 exchanges in the same session, and the AI deliberately targets the weak spots from your summary instead of starting from scratch. Follow-up rounds always cost credits (there's no free slot for them) and are available on Pro and Premium plans.

Session History

Every session is saved on the Interview Practice page. Each session card shows its status — Active, Completed, Expired, or Error — plus your score, and you can search and filter the list by mode, status, and recency. From a session you can:

• Continue an Active session (free, uses your remaining exchanges) or run the paid follow-up on a Completed one
• Export PDF — a transcript document with the position, date, every question and answer, and your summary scores, strengths, areas to improve, recommendations, and next steps
• Delete — permanent; the confirmation warns that all messages are removed, unused exchanges are lost, and credits are not refunded

Retention: Sessions Are Deleted — Export First

• Sessions are kept for 30, 90, or 180 days (default 90). Change this under Settings → Preferences → Interview Session Retention.
• The window is sliding: it's measured from the session's last message, so continuing a session pushes its expiry forward. A follow-up round also extends the expiry of the session it builds on.
• The retention period is fixed on each session when it's created — changing the setting later applies to new sessions only.
• Session cards show an "Expires in X days" notice as the date approaches, and you get a warning email 7 days before a session expires.
• At expiry the session and all its messages are permanently deleted — there is no archive or undo. If you want to keep a session, use Export PDF before it expires.
• Your interview conversations, the CV snapshot used for context, and your performance summaries are encrypted at rest.

A Suggested Preparation Workflow

1. Generate your documents for the target job. On Pro or Premium, include the Interview Q&A document and read through the 20 questions.
2. Run a Coaching session (your first one is free). Let the coach correct your answers question by question.
3. Study the Session Summary. The Skills Breakdown and Areas to Improve tell you exactly what to drill.
4. Run a Practice session (also free the first time) for a realistic, no-hints mock.
5. Go deeper with a targeted follow-up on whatever still isn't landing — another 15 exchanges focused on your weak spots.
6. Export the PDF and re-read your weakest answers the evening before the real interview.

Good to Know

• You can practice silently by typing from anywhere, or speak your answers out loud to rehearse delivery — and switch between the two mid-session.
• Practice mode saves all feedback for the summary by design; Coaching mode gives it after every answer.
• Free lifetime sessions produce the same full Session Summary as paid ones.
• Deleting a session is housekeeping, not a refund — credits spent on it stay spent.
• The exported session PDF is a great artifact to bring into a mock interview with a friend or coach.

Next Steps

• Generate application documents
• Understand the document generation process
• How the credit system works

Good preparation is repetition with honest feedback. Use the Interview Q&A document to learn the questions — and Interview Practice to learn yourself — then walk in confident.