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Interview Prep

JobHawk generates personalized interview preparation materials using AI. When you schedule an interview, the system automatically researches the company, builds a tailored question bank, and identifies potential red flags based on your preferences. After the interview, you can generate follow-up email drafts.

What Gets Generated

Interview Prep produces three types of content, each tailored to the specific role, company, and your career profile.

Company Brief

A concise intelligence report about the company you are interviewing with. The brief includes:

  • Company overview -- what the company does and its market position.
  • Recent news -- funding rounds, product launches, leadership changes, and other developments.
  • Financial signals -- earnings and stock trends for public companies, or funding stage for private companies.
  • Press sentiment -- a one-sentence summary of whether the company has positive momentum, neutral coverage, or concerning trends.
  • Talking points -- specific things you can reference during the interview to demonstrate research.
  • Red flags -- potential concerns cross-referenced against your deal breakers and preferences, each with a clarifying question you can ask.

Tip

Red flags are matched against your job preferences -- deal breakers, must-have benefits, risk tolerance, and location preference. Keep your preferences up to date for better results.

Question Bank

A personalized set of questions organized into two groups:

Questions you may be asked:

  • Behavioral -- role-appropriate questions with STAR story prompts to help you recall relevant experiences.
  • Technical -- domain-specific questions based on the job description and your background.
  • Gap-bridging -- targeted questions for candidates transitioning industries, roles, or seniority levels.
  • Culture-fit -- questions tailored to the company size and culture.

Questions you should ask:

Each suggested question is linked to your preferences so you can gather the information that matters most to you.

Employment Status Framing

The question bank adapts based on your current employment status, which you set in your profile under Current Job:

  • Employed -- questions assume a stable employment context. Behavioral story prompts focus on progression within your current role.
  • Unemployed -- the system adds questions about employment gaps, what you have been doing to stay current, and how you have handled career transitions. Story prompts emphasize resilience and recent experience from your most recent role.
  • Freelance / Contract -- questions address the transition from independent work to a team environment, including autonomy expectations and managing competing priorities. Story prompts draw from multiple client engagements rather than a single employer.

This framing also carries over to Offer Comparisons -- an unemployed candidate sees offer-vs-offer analysis without switching costs, while an employed candidate sees the delta against their current role.

Note

The question bank also reports data gaps -- missing profile information that would improve personalization. Follow these suggestions to get better results next time.

Interviewer Context Cards

When contacts are linked to your application and assigned as interviewers, JobHawk generates a context card for each person. Each card includes:

  • Focus areas -- what this interviewer likely cares about based on their role and title.
  • Suggested questions -- role-specific questions to ask this person.
  • Rapport hooks -- conversation starters drawn from your notes and publicly available information.
  • Previously met -- an indicator if you've interacted with this person in an earlier interview round.

Context cards appear in the prep dialog alongside the Company Brief and Question Bank.

Tip

Context cards are only generated when you have contacts linked to the application. See Add Interviewer Details for how to get the most out of this feature.

Follow-Up Email Drafts

After an interview, generate personalized thank-you email drafts for each interviewer. Each draft includes:

  • A subject line and email body.
  • A tone suited to the company and your career stage.
  • The interviewer's email address, if available from your contacts.

You can regenerate drafts up to three times if you want a fresh take.

How It Works

Automatic Prep on Interview Creation

When you create an interview, JobHawk automatically generates your prep materials in the background before the interview. If you reschedule the interview, prep generation adjusts to match the new time.

Viewing Your Prep

Open the Interview Prep dialog from any of these entry points:

  • The Prep button on an interview card.
  • A smart banner that appears when an interview is approaching.
  • A timeline event in the application's activity history.

The prep dialog organizes content into tabs:

  • Company Brief -- company overview, news, talking points, and red flags.
  • Questions -- likely questions with STAR prompts and suggested questions to ask.
  • Interviewers -- context cards for each interviewer (when contacts are linked).
  • Follow-Up -- email drafts (available after the interview).

Generating Follow-Up Drafts

Follow-up drafts are generated on demand, not automatically. To generate them:

  1. Wait until the interview's scheduled time has passed.
  2. Open the Interview Prep dialog.
  3. Navigate to the Follow-Up tab and click Generate Follow-Up.

The system creates one draft per interviewer. If you have contacts linked to the application, their names, titles, and emails are used. Otherwise, the interviewer names from the interview record are used.

Warning

Follow-up generation is not available for canceled interviews or interviews that have not yet occurred.

To regenerate drafts with a fresh version, click Regenerate. You can regenerate up to three times per interview.

Tips for Best Results

Complete Your Profile

The more context JobHawk has, the better the prep materials. Focus on:

  • Job preferences -- deal breakers, must-have benefits, risk tolerance, and location preference. These drive red flag detection and suggested questions to ask.
  • Current job details -- your title, company, start date, and employment status (employed, unemployed, or freelance) help calibrate question difficulty, story prompts, and employment-specific framing.
  • Career stage -- this affects question types and follow-up email tone.

Tip

If your preferences are more than 30 days old, the system flags them as potentially outdated. Review and update them periodically for the best results.

Add Interviewer Details

When creating an interview, add interviewer names. If you also create contacts for them and link those contacts to the application, the system can:

  • Pull in their title and role for more relevant follow-up emails.
  • Include their email address in draft emails so you can send directly.
  • Use their background to tailor talking points.
  • Generate Interviewer Context Cards with personalized briefings for each person you'll meet.

Add Interview Notes

After each interview, update the notes and sentiment fields. These inform:

  • Follow-up email tone and content.
  • Question bank refinements for subsequent rounds.
  • Red flag reassessment based on what you learned.

Understanding the Prep Timeline

Interview Prep tracks where you are in the process:

  • Days since applied -- how long since you submitted the application.
  • Interview round -- which round this is (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.), based on previous interviews for the same application.
  • Previous interviews -- a summary of earlier rounds, including your sentiment for each.

This timeline context helps the AI calibrate its advice. First-round questions focus on fit and fundamentals, while later rounds shift toward depth and negotiation.

Privacy and Data Usage

Interview Prep uses data from your profile, applications, and interviews to generate personalized content. This includes your job preferences, career details, company information, job descriptions, interviewer names, and any notes you have added.

  • Prep content is generated using LLM providers. Web search is used to find recent company news; search queries are not linked to your personal information.
  • Generated content is stored in your account and is not shared with other users.