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How to prepare for an AI interview

A free, practical guide to passing an AI interview: how AI interviews are scored, what to prepare, how to answer with evidence, and what your rights are. Written by the team that runs them.

What actually happens

  1. 01

    The brief you should ask for

    Before the interview you are entitled to know the role, the stages, roughly how long each takes, and whether a human reviews the result. If an employer will not tell you, that is information too. Octively sends this in the invitation.

  2. 02

    A structured conversation, not a personality test

    Every candidate for the role gets the same questions in the same order. There is no hidden scoring of your accent, your background, or how quickly you speak. You are being asked to describe work you have actually done.

  3. 03

    Claims get checked

    If you say you cut deployment time by half, expect a follow-up on how it was measured and who else would remember it. Specific answers score well because they can be verified; vague ones cannot be scored at all.

  4. 04

    A human reads the file

    The transcript, the rationale and the sources go to the hiring team as one document. The model does not make the hire — it makes the case reviewable.

Six things to do the night before

  • Pick six stories from real work: a shipped project, a failure, a conflict, a measurable improvement, something you learned late, something you would redo.
  • For each one, memorise three numbers — scale, duration, result. Numbers survive paraphrasing; adjectives do not.
  • Say what you personally did. "We migrated the platform" scores lower than "I wrote the migration and ran the cutover for 40 services".
  • Name the constraint you worked under. Good judgement is only visible against a limit: a deadline, a budget, a team of two.
  • Answer the question that was asked, then stop. Two focused minutes beat six unfocused ones.
  • Test audio in the room you will use, wired headphones if you have them, and keep water within reach.

Questions you can ask back

An interview is two-directional even when one side is a model. Reasonable requests to make of any employer using AI in hiring:

  • Ask whether AI is used and at which stage.
  • Ask for a human review of an automated outcome.
  • Ask for a reasonable adjustment — extra time, a written format, a different channel.
  • Ask what data is kept, for how long, and how to have it deleted.

Candidate questions

Do I need to pay or sign up for this guide?
No. This page is free, needs no account, and is not gated. It is the same preparation guidance we send candidates who interview through Octively.
Can I use notes during an AI interview?
For most roles, yes — bullet notes are fine and reading a prepared script is not, because follow-up questions go off the script immediately. If notes are not allowed, the invitation should say so.
What if the technology fails mid-interview?
Say so and continue if you can; every session is recorded with timestamps, so a dropout is visible in the file. Ask for the affected section to be re-run rather than accepting a score built on a broken recording.
Will an AI interview reject me automatically?
In a well-run process, no. The interview produces evidence and a recommendation; a person decides. If an employer tells you a machine made the final call, you can ask for that decision to be reviewed by a human.

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