Mock interviews with someone looking back at you.
Get the nerves out before the real one.

Why practice with a face

Most candidates know roughly what they want to say. What goes wrong on the day is saying it: out loud, under a little pressure, while another person watches and waits. Answers that sounded crisp in your head come out long, and the example you meant to use disappears. That is a performance skill, and like any performance it gets better with rehearsal in conditions close to the real thing.

Typing answers into a chat window never puts you in those conditions. Facelet does. ChatGPT plays the interviewer, in a human voice, with a lifelike face on your Mac that looks at you while you answer. You notice the pause before you start, the moment you ramble, the answer you did not finish. And because it is ChatGPT, the interviewer can play any role at any company, ask a follow-up to exactly what you said, and tell you afterwards which answer was weakest.

A thirty-minute mock interview

1. Brief the interviewer. The role, the level, the kind of company and how tough you want it. The first line below is a template.
2. “Tell me about yourself.” Keep it to ninety seconds. If it is longer, you will hear it in the silence.
3. Three behavioural questions. Answer each with a situation, what you did, and the result, and let it ask “What did you do, specifically?” when you drift into “we”.
4. The question you dread. The gap in your CV, why you are leaving, the project that failed. Ask for it by name and answer it three times.
5. Your questions for them. Interviewers remember these. Practice asking two good ones.
6. The debrief. Ask it to score each answer for clarity and evidence, name the weakest, then ask that question again straight away.

Things to say

• “Be the hiring manager for a senior product designer role at a fifty-person fintech startup. Interview me for twenty minutes, one question at a time, and ask a follow-up whenever my answer is vague.”
• “Be tougher. If I don’t give a specific example, interrupt me and ask for one.”
• “Ask me about the eight-month gap on my CV, and don’t accept the first answer.”
• “Stop. What would you write in your notes about that answer?”
• “Switch roles. You’re a friendly recruiter doing a fifteen-minute phone screen.”
• “I’ve been offered ninety-five thousand. Play the recruiter while I negotiate for a hundred and ten, and push back the way a real one would.”
• “Score each of my answers from one to five for clarity and evidence, then ask me the weakest one again.”

How to set it up

• Sit the way you will on the day. Upright, at a desk, with the Mac raised so the face is at eye level. If it is a video interview, use the setup you will use for the real call.
• Full screen, one character. Choose a character and voice that feel like an interviewer to you, and give Facelet the whole screen.
• Always listening. Real interviewers cut in and follow up. Always listening lets the conversation run the same way.
• Record yourself if you want to see your body language. Facelet does not use your camera. Photo Booth or QuickTime can record you while you practice.

What it won’t do

• It cannot see you. It will not comment on posture, eye contact or clothes, because Facelet never turns on your camera.
• It does not know the real questions a specific company asks. It asks realistic ones for the role you describe.
• It will not remember last week’s mock interview. Keep notes on your weakest answers and bring them to the next session.
• It is not a live-coding environment. It can discuss a technical problem out loud, but it cannot watch you write code or draw a diagram.