Helping job seekers prepare for technical interviews by enabling context-rich interview feedback

Technical interviews have become a popular method for recruiters in the tech industry to assess job candidates' proficiency in both soft skills and technical skills as programmers. However, these interviews can be stressful and frustrating for interviewees. One significant cause of the negative experience of technical interviews was the lack of feedback, making it difficult for job seekers to improve their performance progressively by participating in technical interviews. Although there are open platforms like Leetcode that allow job seekers to practice their technical proficiency, resources for conducting mock interviews to practice soft skills like communication are limited and costly to interviewees. To address this, we investigated how professional interviewers provide feedback if they were conducting a mock interview and the difficulties they face when interviewing job seekers by running mock interviews between software engineers and job seekers. With the insights from the formative studies, we developed a new system for technical interviews aiming to help interviewers conduct technical interviews with less cognitive load and provide context-rich feedback. An evaluation study on the usability of using our system to conduct technical interviews further revealed the unresolved cognitive loads of interviewers, underscoring the requirements for further improvement to facilitate easier interview processes and enable peer-to-peer interview practices.