Interview Signal practice roles: try a scored interview first

Interview Signal comes with two practice roles, "Practice — Senior Backend Engineer" and "Practice — Account Executive, B2B SaaS", each with a ready-made question set and scorecard. You add them from the home screen, start an interview, read the questions aloud, and play recorded candidates from the practice page on the website; the app hears the answers through your computer's sound, as it would on a call, and transcribes and scores them live. It is the quickest honest way to see what the app does with a strong, a vague and a scripted answer. This describes version 0.9.10, as of October 2026.

What are the practice roles?

On the practice page, each role has three recorded candidates answering the same questions, labeled "Specific", "Vague" and "Reads from a script". Everything is fictional. The practice page also has forty-eight more roles, from frontend code to structural steel, to play and read; only these two are built into the app.

How do I add the practice roles?

1. Open the home screen.
2. With no roles yet, click "add two practice roles" under "Paste a job description". If you already have roles, click "Add practice roles" at the bottom of the Roles panel.
3. A message confirms "Practice roles added. Start one, then play the candidate from the practice page.", with a button to open the page.

The roles appear in a collapsed "Practice" group at the bottom of the Roles panel. Like any role, they are saved to your account, so on a Team plan your colleagues see them too.

How do I run a practice interview?

1. Start one. Pick a practice role from the "Practice" group in the "Start an interview" bar, or press "Start" on its row.
2. Open the practice page. The pre-interview screen says "This is a practice role." and has an "Open the practice page" button that opens the same role in your browser.
3. Set up as for a call. Choose "Video call", run the audio check, and pick a consent option if you like (it is optional).
4. Read each question aloud yourself, then press "Play the answer" on the practice page. Do not press "Play the question" as well: the app would hear the question as candidate audio.
5. Watch the live screen. The transcript fills in under "Candidate", the guide ticks the question, follow-ups appear, and the scorecard scores the areas the answer speaks to. Press "Evaluate" to score at once.
6. End the interview to see the review screen and the client submittal written from it.

Speakers or headphones both work on Windows. On a Mac, the app needs Screen & System Audio Recording permission to hear anything played through the computer, and macOS applies it only after the app is reopened. See the audio check if the candidate meter stays flat.

What should I look for?

• Quotes that survive. The specific candidate gets high scores with their own words under each one. Every quote is checked against the transcript; see the scorecard guide.
• A vague answer scoring low. Answers with no names, numbers or decisions in them score low however confident they sound, and an area with no quotable evidence is capped at 5 and marked "Probe further".
• The scripted answer. With "Flag answers that may be AI-generated" on, a polished, recited answer may be flagged with reasons and a question to try. It never changes the score; see the answer check.
• The must-ask. Skip the notice-period question and "End interview" asks you to type END first.

How are practice interviews kept apart from real ones?

Practice interviews show the status "Practice" on the home screen. They never appear under "To finish", they are left out of the week line, and the "Start an interview" bar never picks a practice role for you. Practice roles sit in their own group in the role list and in the start bar.

Do practice interviews use my minutes?

Yes. A practice interview is a real live transcription, so on Free and Pay as you go it counts against your minutes like any interview. Time is counted by the minute, only while transcription runs, and a practice run is short, but it still comes out of the 20 free minutes or your bought hours. On Solo and Team nothing is counted. See pricing.

Limits

• Only two practice roles are built into the app; the rest are on the practice page only.
• The practice kits are short, four questions each, so a practice submittal is short too.
• Playing an answer through the speakers while your microphone is on can put the candidate's words on your side as well; the app removes the duplicate, but headphones give a cleaner transcript.