Ask HN: Do you think there is market for mock job interviews with professionals | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you think there is market for mock job interviews with professionals

4 pointsnisthana16 comments

Mock Rounds can be quite useful for candidates and they might be willing to pay for it too. But harder problem is supply of professionals. This works well when there is wide range of professionals conducting these rounds. Most professionals (good ones) are tied to their jobs, make good money and would rather spend and hour with family or friends than conducting an interview that pays less than 50$ or so.

You can check out tripple byte, although not similar model but they seem to have figured out supply side well, mostly due to its association with YC.

Hi @mindhash - excellent point. I completely agree that supply is key. However that is the side I am much confident about. I have been fortunate to work for some of the best silicon valley companies so have built a network of talented professionals overtime. Some of them would definitely not do it for $50 but a lot more may be willing to spend their free time doing this. Also the way I am thinking of implementing it (if I ever do depending on the demand), is very non-intrusive. In my mind, the mock interviews do not need to be face to face all the time, they can be done in an asynchronous way (I can share details if you'd like). I created a landing page to gather the interest but not sure where to share the link so I can get people to give me feedback.

I know tripple byte and you are right, they depend on their YC network. I am also dependent on my personal network hoping if there is enough demand I can convince my talented friends to do it :-)) Thanks a lot for your feedback

Without a doubt I found that being put on the spot and under pressure reinforces the learning experience in a way that is simply unmatched when trying to learn alone. Particularly for phone interviews where there is really a limited set of questions that can be asked as screeners and you just don't have the natural feel of discussing it with the interviewer face to face or chiefly having a piece of paper or whiteboard to illustrate your thinking.

Thanks @throwaway_374 for your comment. Are you speaking from an hiring manager perspective or from the perspective of an interviewer? As an interviewer, personally I ask my friends to do mock interview before I go in for the real one. That helps removing blind spots specially if I ask multiple friends to interview me on the same job position and I ask them time box it to max 45 mins. Personally that gives me a simulator environment of sorts. However I may be a one off case as I may not be super confident about my interviewing skills.

I wanted to know if there are other people who are nervous about going to the interview without doing a test run in a pressurized environment. Could they use a service where they get connected to professionals from tech companies to do mock interviews for them.

Thanks again for your awesome feedback

Depends on your definition of "with professionals". Existing outplacement services like Lee Hecht Harrison offer in-person sessions with coaches who can practice behavioral questions in a mock interview scenario.

They aren't able to do technical questions because they serve a broad audience but practicing HackerRank questions on a whiteboard or a notepad is close enough.

True. Lets say John applies to Product Manager position at Google.

Question 1 - Do you think there is any value in connecting the John to PM's from Google, Facebook, Uber, Salesforce etc so they can do a mock interview and give first hand feedback to John. Each interview is time boxed and the questions are composed by those PM's. The PM's get paid to do the mock interview.

Question 2 - will a Google PM be ok in doing this mock considering that it may be considered unethical? What about the non Google PM's who are equally competent but work for other companies?

Thanks a lot for your time @RandomOpinion

> The PM's get paid to do the mock interview.

This violates the anti-moonlighting clause that most companies have.

> Will a Google PM be ok in doing this mock considering that it may be considered unethical?

There is no incentive for top companies to permit their employees coach applicants with questions from their interview process. It would amount to being able to pay money to get an edge in their hiring process and the top companies wouldn't even be getting any of the fee.

The employees at the top companies are making enough money that they would have no interest in it anyway.

Agreed! Thanks for your feedback!

I suspect it's like exercising. People know they should do it, and they know it's good for them, but it's also unpleasant for a lot of people.

Either way, B2C companies are super risky and expensive to start. Try an ad-hoc version on craigslist before you put a lot of time or effort into this.

Hi @smt88 - thanks for your reply. Makes sense to what you said. I can imagine some people may be uncomfortable taking the mock interview. However I have a different way to implement it, which is pleasant for both interviewer and interviewee. I started two companies so know very well how difficult is it to sell products to users. Thats why I want to get some feedback before starting a new idea. I am a developer so I put one pager website (I am not sure if I am allowed to share links here so did not) to seek interest but your suggestion of posting on craigslist is excellent. Thanks a lot for your thoughts.

If it's more pleasant, is it still good for practice? A lot of the value of practicing interviews is to slowly become comfortable with the stress and pressure.

True, agreed!

There might be higher up the corporate ladder. For a coding peon there is no point. You can get it for free by first applying for jobs you are less excited about for the practice.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I think I got my answer. This is not a viable business idea so I will not spend anytime thinking about it :-))

This already exists (not affiliated in any way): interviewing.io

hi skylark - thanks for sharing. This makes my job easier, I really don't have to build it since its already there :-)) Thanks for your info,

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