had an interview in 4 days and practicing alone felt completely pointless

got a callback for a frontend role on a tuesday. interview was scheduled for saturday morning. i had four days to not sound like an idiot when they asked me to explain my projects.

the problem wasn't that i didn't know my stuff — i did. the problem was i'd never said any of it out loud to another person. practicing in front of my laptop felt performative and fake. i'd start explaining something, trail off, realize i had no idea how to make it sound coherent.

i tried recording myself on my phone but just ended up deleting everything because listening back made me cringe. talking to the mirror was somehow worse.

ended up finding this tool called nxtinterview that basically simulates the back-and-forth of a real interview. you can feed it your resume and it'll ask follow-ups based on what you actually worked on. the part that helped most was that it pushed back when my answers were too vague — like a real person would.

spent two nights running through different question sets. by the actual interview i wasn't scrambling to find words. i knew how to structure an answer, when to stop talking, how to pivot if i got stuck.

interview went well. not perfect, but way better than it would've been if i'd just winged it. got the offer last week.

full disclosure: i'm just someone who used it, not affiliated with them at all. but if you're in that same spot where you know your stuff but can't articulate it under pressure, it's worth trying. helped me way more than talking to myself did.

you can check it out at nxtinterview.com if you're prepping for something soon.