Your guide to using AI for Interview Preparation

This guide outlines what AI can and cannot help you with for interview preparation and how to use it effectively. If you are new to using AI, please look at our Using AI page for a broad understanding of its use.

What AI can/cannot do for interview preparation

AI can:

  • Act as an on-demand practice tool, suggesting likely interview questions to help you with your preparation. You can submit the job description and person specification documents straight into AI for it to generate the questions.
  • Provide basic feedback to interview questions, such as general pointers.

AI cannot:

  • Research the role and the organisation as effectively as you can.
    • AI may provide information that is inaccurate or unrelated. You must research thoroughly yourself. If AI does offer information, be critical of this, can you check this is up-to-date?
  • Provide personalised, informed feedback.
    • AI output may be based on out-of-date information, it is often generic, and it can’t reflect on how your personal employability aligns with the role. The Careers Service run interview simulations (practice interviews), which are a great opportunity to receive personalised, tailored feedback on your answers. Book via CareerConnect
    • Be aware that employers often use AI to see what information it generates about them. It is important that you do not directly copy material that AI comes up with. Implement your own insights.

Using the 3 P's to apply AI in interview preparation

If you haven’t heard of our ‘3 P’s’ (Prepare, Prompt, Proofread), there is more information on our Using AI page.

Prepare

You have an interview, congratulations! Before thinking about potential questions (which is where AI may be helpful), it is essential to remind yourself of the role, the organisation and, most importantly, how your skills, interests and experience align with the opportunity.

As a starting point for this research, we would recommend using:

  • The job description and person specification
  • The organisation's online profiles i.e. website, LinkedIn, other social media.
  • Your original application.

Our page on Interview Practice and Preparation has more advice on this.

This preparation provides the key ingredients needed to build your answers, your AI prompts and to be critical of AI suggestions.

Prompt

What AI can do, is use information that you prompt it with, and basic information gathered from data sets, to generate example interview questions. For this reason, thorough and detailed instructions in your prompt are essential. The CLEAR model (adapted by Danny Mirza, Coventry University London – link below) outlines key information to include.

CLEAR stands for:

  • Context: Introduce yourself i.e. course, year, interview for X role with Y organisation.
  • Limit: Outline what you are looking for precisely i.e. 5 mock questions for a competency-based interview based on the following job description.
  • Elaborate: Further relevant information i.e. the interview will be focussed on these outlined skills.
  • Assumptions: Include any other restraints i.e. length of the interview.
  • Redirect: Read through the first suggestions and rethink your prompt, is there anything you missed?

If you are struggling to get started, we recommend this article on LinkedIn: 50 ChatGPT Prompts to Help You Prepare for an Interview

When prompting AI, be careful to not use personal data. Different AI tools have different data privacy policies. Make sure you are anonymising your data when using AI to avoid it being used elsewhere.

Proofread

Do not take what AI says at face value. When you read the AI suggestions, consider:

  • It doesn’t know you and you may be missing key points about your own experiences that could enhance your answers.
  • Its information may not be accurate. Free tools (older versions of ChatGPT for example) use limited or older data sets to generate its outputs. AI can also fabricate facts (known as hallucinations).
  • The organisation may have its own advice about their interview question structure and recommended preparation. Use this, instead of AI, as your primary source of insight into the structure of the interview. Platforms such as LinkedIn, The Student Room or Glassdoor may have testimonies from people who have interviewed with the company in the past.

Prompt examples

Please see below some examples of effective/ineffective practice when prompting AI:

  • Ineffective: I have an interview for a marketing role.
  • Effective: I have an interview for a marketing executive role within an FMCG organisation
  • Ineffective: Can you help me to prepare for this interview?
  • Effective: Please can you run an interview simulation with me, acting as a careers professional, and ask me questions relevant to this role: *Paste person specification* allow me to answer each question one at a time and provide feedback on each of my answers.
  • Ineffective: What skills should I look to display in interview?
  • Effective: Based on this person specification what skills are the employer likely to ask me to demonstrate using examples in this interview? Can you check my CV: *Paste CV* and match any experience I already have to these skills?

Using AI on the day - Things to be aware of

There are some AI tools that allow you to input live information and receive on the spot answers. This may help you to feel more comfortable and therefore be tempting to use.

However, it can negatively impact your interview:

  • Your delivery may be compromised or you may be distracted.
  • The tone can seem generic or impersonal.
  • The information may not be correct or up-to-date.

Interviews are an opportunity for employers to meet and engage with you and for the above reasons AI may be detrimental to this. Several employers have shared with us that they can tell when students are inputting into AI tools during interviews, and/or reading out generic answers that do not reflect the candidate's experiences.

Using AI in a live situation does not allow you to prepare or proofread the prompts you give, and therefore is unlikely to be as effective. It is most useful as a tool for you to enhance your own preparation.

Remember AI is a supplement, not the whole answer to your preparation. Assess AI output from a critical perspective and ensure that it is meeting all the requirements of a good interview response. These pages have more information about how to build a good answer:

Useful Resources

If you get stuck, come and speak to the Careers Service.

Good luck!