Mock interviews

Overview

An interview is marked on how you think aloud under questioning, and that is hard to rehearse alone. The Interview room gives you two ways to rehearse it:

• AI interview. Available straight away, at any hour. An AI panel sits the board the way the real one is sat — its members, their areas, the order they ask in — and questions you from your own form. You get a written assessment the moment you finish.
• Real interviewer. A person you book for a set time: a retired officer, a former board member, a faculty member, an HR interviewer or engineer, or a coaching institute. You meet by video, and they score you on the same criteria afterwards.

Both happen in the same room, laid out like a video call, and both reports sit side by side in your Studio, so an AI board on Monday and a real interviewer on Friday can be compared on the same scale.

Which interviews

The room knows 75 interviews, grouped the way they are listed on the public Mock interviews pages. Each has its own page there with its rounds, its panel, what it assesses and the form the panel reads.

The details — the maximum marks, how the interview weighs against the written exam, the size of the panel — were checked against each body's own notification where it publishes one. A few boards publish no interview marks at all, or sources disagree about them; for those the report gives a practice index out of 100 instead of inventing a number.

Starting an interview

If an exam you are preparing for ends in an interview, the Studio home shows the Interview room and opens on that board. For any other, choose A different interview and search: “RBI”, “SSB”, “Amazon”, “case interview”. Before you begin, the setup page shows:

• Who you will face, in the order they ask: the chair and each member with their area, or the single interviewer for a company round.
• What the board assesses, in the board's own terms where it publishes them: UPSC's qualities, the SSB's factors, a bank's list.
• Rounds, where the interview has more than one: a company's phone screen, coding, design and behavioural rounds, or a consulting firm's two case styles. Choose the one you are about to face.
• Interview length. Full board sits the whole interview. Drill one member (or Drill one area where there is one interviewer) takes five questions from one line of questioning — the area you are weakest in.
• Interview language. Boards that can be taken in Hindi — the UPSC boards, the Hindi-belt commissions, the banks, the SSB and others — can be sat in Hindi.
• Voice. Choose whether the board reads its questions aloud. Each member has a different voice, so you can tell who is asking without looking.

You can start three AI interviews a day. Each is a full sitting with a long assessment at the end; the count resets at midnight.

Your form

A real board reads your application before you walk in, and most of its questions come from it. Fill in the form this board reads: the DAF for UPSC, the PIQ for the SSB, the application profile for a bank, your résumé for a company. Fields with a violet dot are needed: the board will not start until they are filled, because it cannot ask you anything personal without them.

• It is saved once and reused. Fields that several boards share — your graduation subject, your home district, your hobbies — carry across, so a second board starts mostly filled.
• Each board sees only its own fields. Your UPSC optional does not reach an IIM panel.
• When you book a real interviewer, the form goes to them with the booking, so they can read it before the day the way a real board does.
• Fill it from a file. Upload your DAF, PIQ or résumé (PDF, Word, a text file or a photo) and the fields are filled from it for you to check. Nothing is saved until you start or check the form.
• Paste the job description for a company interview. The interviewer pitches the problems and questions to it.
• Check the form. Before an interview, Check my form reads it as a board would: for each line, how likely it is to be picked on and three questions it invites. Practise any of them on its own from the list.

The room

The room is laid out like a video call, and it is the same whether the interviewer is the AI or a person. The screen is made of tiles:

• The interviewer. With the AI board, the member who is asking, with the rest of the panel in a strip beneath. With a real interviewer, their video.
• You. Your own camera, so you can watch how you come across. In an AI interview it is a mirror: your video is not recorded or sent anywhere.
• Scratchpad. Notes only you can see, kept on your device. Put down the three points you mean to make before you start speaking.
• Whiteboard. For a structure, a map, a flow or a diagram. The AI board looks at it: whenever you have drawn something new, a picture of the board goes with your answer. With a real interviewer the board is shared and one of you holds the pen at a time.
• Code, in coding rounds: a shared editor. See Coding, design & case rounds.

Bring any tile into focus with a click, or switch to a grid. The question appears as a caption under the tiles. The side panel has the transcript so far, your form, and a tab on the board or round itself; in a coding, design or case round it also pins the problem or the case. On a phone, the controls that do not fit — camera, transcript, scratchpad, captions, the board's voice — are under More.

Answering

• Speak. Press Answer (or the space bar), speak, and press Done to send it. Your words appear under the tiles as you speak, so you can see they are being heard. If nothing was caught, the room says so and nothing is sent.
• Hands-free. Switch on Answer hands-free in the setup's options and the microphone opens by itself when each question ends; a few seconds of quiet sends your answer, as in a real room.
• Or type. Useful in a library, in a browser without speech recognition, or when you want to weigh the wording of an answer to a hard question. Enter sends it.
• Mind the length. The room counts the words in each answer. Boards are comfortable between about 40 and 150: long enough to make a point, short enough to land it. The report plots every answer against that band, with your median time.
• Shortcuts. Space starts an answer, W opens the whiteboard and N the scratchpad, whenever you are not typing.
• End when you like. After three answers you can stop and be assessed on what you said. The report says which areas went untested rather than guessing at them.

You are marked on substance and treated generously on delivery. Spoken answers are unpunctuated and informal, and you are never marked down for sounding like a person talking.

How the AI board runs

The AI board follows the real board's shape rather than firing random questions:

• Its own panel. Five members for a UPSC board; an Interviewing Officer for the SSB; a chair and members for a bank or a commission; one interviewer for most company rounds. Each member has an area, and questions come from that member.
• In the real order. A civil services board moves from the opening through your education, your home state, your interests and current affairs to a situation, and the chair closes. A member hands over to the next the way members do.
• It listens. A follow-up builds on what you actually said. A vague answer is pressed for an example; a one-sided one is challenged.
• It reads your form. Your district, your subject, your job and your hobbies come back as questions.

A company round is run as one interviewer and written up the way a hiring committee reads a packet, not the way a commission awards marks.

Your report

The assessment arrives when you end the interview. It is a practice estimate, calibrated to what the board publishes, and not a forecast of your real marks.

• The score. Scaled to the board's real maximum where it has one — out of 275 for UPSC, 100 for a bank, and so on — with a band. Boards that publish no marks get a practice index out of 100.
• What the board assessed. Each of the board's own criteria, scored, with what you did that earned or lost it.
• Member by member (or area by area). How each line of questioning went, so you can see it was the current affairs member, not the whole board, that you lost.
• Moments the board noticed. Short quotes from your own answers, marked as strong or weak. Every quote is checked against your transcript.
• How you spoke. The words in each answer against the 40–150 band, your median length and time, and how many answers were one-liners or ran past 180 words.
• Your form. Every line of your form, marked Held up, Shaky or Not asked yet.
• Three fixes and Before your real board, prepare these: the questions most likely to come up that you are not yet ready for.
• How you said it. Your pace in words a minute against a comfortable band, long pauses, filler words (“um”, “basically”, “like”) counted from a word-for-word transcription of your voice, and how much of each answer you looked toward the camera.
• Answer it again. Any question from the interview can be practised on its own: you answer it again and are told whether it got better, and what changed.
• Watch yourself back, if you chose to record it on this device: the video with each question marked, kept in this browser only.
• Read the whole interview. The full transcript.

Coding, design and case rounds add the problem you were set, your final code with line-by-line review notes, and the whiteboard as you left it. Every report is kept, and Your boards so far on the setup page lists them with their scores. Once you have sat a board a few times, Your progress charts each sitting, AI and real interviewer alike, so you can see whether it is moving.

Booking a real interviewer

Open the Real interviewer tab. Filter by the board you face, by language and by the kind of session, and open anyone's profile to see their background, their panel if they sit with colleagues, what past candidates said and their open slots for the next month. Every published interviewer also has a public page, linked from the pages of the interviews they take under Mock interviews.

A Verified badge on a credential means the Tuition.in team has seen a document for that claim — a service order, an appointment letter. Claims without the badge are the interviewer's own word.

When you book a slot:

• Choose the round, if the interview has more than one: a phone screen, a design round, a Bar Raiser. The interviewer's session and scorecard follow it.
• Leave a note, if you like: the area you want pushed hardest, or the date of your real interview.
• Choose whether it is recorded, so you can watch yourself back.
• Pay, for a paid session. The slot is held for you for 10 minutes while you do; if the payment does not go through in that time, the slot is released.

Slots can be booked up to 15 minutes before they start. You get a notification, and the booking appears under Your interviews in the same tab, with Add to calendar (Google Calendar, or a file for Outlook and Apple Calendar). You are reminded the day before and an hour before.

Packages and form reviews

Some interviewers sell several full interviews at once, the way coaching panels sell a series of mock boards, sometimes with a review of your form first. Their packages are on their profile, with the price per session and what it saves against booking one by one.

• Buying one. Pay once, and the credits are yours for 90 days, for the interview the package is for. You get one receipt for the package.
• Using a credit. Pick one of the interviewer's full-interview slots and choose Use a credit. No payment is taken.
• The form review is a session on your form: the interviewer goes through it line by line and writes a note on each line a board would pick on, then overall advice and the questions to prepare. It opens in your Studio like any report.
• Cancelling a booked session 24 hours ahead gives the credit back, as does the interviewer cancelling or not turning up. Later than that, the credit is used.
• Stopping a package. Under Your packages, choose Stop and refund. The interviews you have had are charged at the interviewer's single price (the discount was for the whole package) and the rest is refunded. Cancel any session still booked with it first.
• A week before a package runs out with credits left, you are reminded.

On the day

• Joining. The room opens 10 minutes before the start. Press Join the room, check your camera and microphone in the lobby, and go in. It stays open until 30 minutes after the booked end, in case either of you is late.
• In the room. The same tiles as the AI room. The whiteboard is shared with one pen; ask for it when you want to draw, and the interviewer hands it over. If the session is recorded, the room shows REC.
• Afterwards. The interviewer scores you on the board's criteria and adds remarks, the questions to prepare and what to fix. You are notified when it is in, and it opens as a report next to your AI boards. The interviewer has 7 days to submit it.
• If the other side doesn't turn up. Wait in the room. Fifteen minutes after the start, whoever joined can press They didn't join. If the interviewer never joined, you are refunded in full (or the credit comes back); if you never joined, the session counts as held. The room's own record of who joined decides it.
• Rate them. Once your report is in, you can rate the interviewer. Ratings and reviews appear on their profile.
• The recording. If you asked for one, Watch recording appears on the interview once it is ready.

Moving, cancelling, refunds

• Moving it. Up to 24 hours before, Move offers the interviewer's other open slots; pick one and the booking moves, with the payment. You can move an interview twice.
• A free session or a demo can be cancelled any time before it starts.
• A paid interview cancelled 24 hours or more before the start is refunded in full. Closer than that it is not, because the interviewer kept the time for you.
• If the interviewer cancels, you are always refunded in full, and told why.
• If you paid for a slot that had already gone to someone else by the time the payment arrived, the payment is refunded automatically.

Refunds go back to the way you paid and usually arrive in 5–7 business days. The booking shows Refund pending until the refund is issued and Refunded after. If a refund stays pending, the team retries it; raise a support ticket if it has not arrived after a week. Every paid interview has a Receipt, numbered, showing the session and the platform fee.

If something goes wrong

From the start of an interview until 7 days after it, Report a problem on the booking tells the team: the interviewer came late or cut it short, the video failed, the conduct was wrong, or the scorecard didn't match what happened. Say what happened in a sentence or two. While it is looked into, the interviewer's earning from it is held. The team decides from the room's record and both sides' accounts: a full refund, a part refund, or no refund with the reason, and both of you are told.

Practising with a peer

Another candidate preparing for the same interview interviews you, then you interview them: thirty minutes each way, free. Open the Peer practice tab.

• Ask for a time: the interview, the round you want to be interviewed on, a day and time, and the language. If someone is already waiting at a time, it is shown first; pick it and you are matched at once. Otherwise you are told when someone matches.
• Your brief. When matched, you get a brief for interviewing the other person: for a coding, design or case round, a problem with hints held back and what a strong answer covers; for a conversation, questions written from their own form. They never see it, and you never see theirs.
• In the room, the one who asked first interviews first. At half time, Swap roles turns it round; either of you can swap early.
• Afterwards, each scores the other on the round's own criteria, and it opens as a report next to your other interviews.
• It is free, so it is five requests in 30 days. Cancelling a match well ahead puts the other person back in the queue; cancelling late doesn't count against them.

Group discussions

Where a selection has a group discussion — SBI PO's group exercise, a PSU's GD, a B-school's group exercise, the SSB's GTO discussion — it is a round of its own. You sit at a table with five other candidates, played by the AI, each with a habit you would meet in a real group: one talks too much, one brings numbers, one disagrees with everything, one hardly speaks. The observer gives the topic and then only watches.

• You get ten seconds to open. Speak (or type) when you choose; Let them go on keeps listening.
• Your share of the talking is on screen against a fair share of the table.
• When time is called, sum up — or leave it to someone else.
• The report scores initiation, content, listening, leadership, communication and summarising, and shows from the discussion itself whether you opened, summed up and named others, and how the talking was shared.

The SSB's other tests

The SSB is five days, not one interview. On the SSB boards, the Interview room also runs the screening PPDT, the psychologist's TAT, WAT, SRT and self-description, and the GTO's lecturette, at the board's own pace: a TAT picture for 30 seconds and four minutes to write, a WAT word every 15 seconds, sixty situations in thirty minutes. The clock moves on without you. Each has a shorter practice set as well as the full test. Each sitting is read against the 15 officer-like qualities, with the words that showed each one; the board gives no marks for these tests, and neither does the report.

Set by your institute

If your institute or tutor sets a mock interview for your batch, it appears under Set for you above the AI board, with the due date and your attempts. Taking it opens its board and round; your best sitting counts. These sittings don't use your own three a day. Your institute sees your scores on each criterion, never what you said.

Publishing to the library

A finished full interview can be shared with the next candidate in the public library. From the report, choose See what would be published: you see exactly what would go up, with names, emails, phone numbers and links taken out, and choose how you are described (“A candidate”, “A UPSC CSE candidate”, “A candidate from Kerala”). The team reads it before it goes up. A real interviewer's session also needs the interviewer to agree. You can take it down at any time from the same report.

What is kept, and who sees it

• Your camera in an AI interview is shown only to you. It is not recorded, stored or sent.
• Your scratchpad stays on your device.
• Your whiteboard is sent to the AI board as a picture with your answer, only when it has changed since the last one.
• Your transcript and report are kept in your Studio. Other students cannot see them.
• Your form goes to a real interviewer only when you book them.
• A recording is made only if you asked for one when booking, and only you can watch it. The interviewer cannot.
• Recording an AI interview to watch back, if you switch it on, saves the video in this browser only. It is never uploaded; the newest five are kept for 14 days.
• Eye contact is measured from your camera on your device; only the percentage is kept.
• Filler words are counted from a word-for-word transcription of each spoken answer. The audio is deleted; only the count is kept.
• A peer sees your form (for their brief) and the feedback they write; peer practice is never recorded.

Common questions

Is the AI board's score what I will get?
No. It is calibrated to the board's published criteria and told not to inflate, but a real board's marks depend on the people in the room on the day. Use it to see which area is weak, and whether it moves across sittings.

Where is the Interview room?
Mock Interviews in your dashboard menu, under Practice. It opens on the interview after the exam you are preparing for, where there is one — CA, CS, CMA, JEE, NEET and the olympiads have none, and TSPSC Group-I dropped its interview. For any other board or company round, choose A different interview.

Can I take the interview in Hindi?
Yes, for boards that allow it: the setup page offers the choice. The board then asks in Hindi, and you can answer in Hindi.

Is the group discussion covered?
Yes, for SBI PO, the PSUs, the B-school group exercise and the SSB: see Group discussions. The other candidates are simulated; only you are assessed. Design studio tests are not covered.

Can a real interviewer see my AI reports?
No. They see the form you booked with and the note you left, nothing else.