I’ve started getting a few interviews for jobs I’ve been applying to (finally!). That means learning how to prepare for interviews.
Standard advice is to have someone ask you questions like you might get in the interview and practice answering out loud. So far I’ve done this role play with a coach on MentorCruise, an AI interview practice website, and with Claude Code in text chat (so not out loud).
I’ve found this method of preparation to be somewhat frictionful and anxiety-inducing, so I know left to my own devices I won’t stick with it. I’ve created a Beeminder goal to ensure I’m doing some type of interview practice for thirty minutes per day on average. That’s great for long-term practice, but not so much for preparation in the last couple of days when I’m likely to be the most stressed and the least likely to voluntarily ramp up the hardest practice type.
I’ve found an alternative that’s working great so far.
- Ask Claude Code to put together all the relevant material to the interview: information about the company, the job, and my relevant career experience.
- Upload the resulting files to a Google Gemini notebook.
- Use the notebook’s audio summary feature to create a long deep-dive podcast using the material.
- Listen to the resulting audio file on repeat.
So far this has created an audio file about an hour long. Gemini Notebook lets you download the file, listen to it on the web, or via the Gemini Notebook phone app. Listening to it over and over helps me to have a much better grasp of everything I need for the interview, and helps me feel more confident going into the interview.
If you’d like to try this approach for yourself, here’s a gist with a prompt Claude Code generated that you can use to have your own Claude instance create the material.