Interview Rehearsal Question Bank

What it does

To prepare a candidate for a specific target role, it generates a calibrated rehearsal question bank derived from that role's real competency profile: behavioral + technical + situational questions, a model STAR(-L) answer scaffold for every behavioral question, a profile-based 0-100 Readiness Score, and pre-interview rehearsal drills. The goal is to surface — before the real interview — the blind spot that would get the candidate rejected, and rehearse it.

Flow: first, CBI (Competency-Based Interviewing) extracts the role's 3-6 core competencies (verified live with web-research + LinkedIn signal where possible). Each competency gets at least one BEI (Behavioral Event Interview) question — not hypothetical "what do you usually do" but a lived critical incident ("tell me about a time"). Each behavioral question carries a STAR / STAR-L scaffold; for senior roles the L (Learning / self-reflection) is mandatory. Technical questions are calibrated to seniority via Bloom's Taxonomy (junior: Remember/Apply; senior: Analyze/Evaluate/Create). The candidate profile is scored on a BARS rubric across five dimensions (competency coverage, result-evidence, technical threshold, narrative clarity, role fit), weighted into the Readiness Score. Finally, the GROW cycle turns each weak competency into a "before-the-interview" drill.

Principle: it never fabricates experience. Where the profile lacks evidence, instead of writing a fake achievement into the STAR it inserts a [insert an example from your X project] placeholder and flags the gap.

When to use it

When a person (or the career coach preparing them) is about to interview for a specific role and asks "build me role-specific rehearsal questions, how should I answer, what am I unprepared for." General career planning, or an employer scoring a candidate, is a different skill — this one produces candidate-side rehearsal. It pays off most when the candidate has the experience but can't yet translate it into interview language (concrete incident + quantified result).

Method / frameworks

• CBI — SHRM/CIPD canon; past behavior predicts future. Makes the role's core competencies the spine of the bank.
• BEI (McClelland/Hay) — lived critical-incident probing; rejects unprovable patterns.
• STAR / STAR-L — Situation–Task–Action–Result(–Learning) scaffold; L mandatory at senior level, CAR variant accepted for junior.
• BARS (Smith & Kendall, 1963) — anchors each answer on a 1-5 behavioral scale, de-subjectivizing the score.
• Bloom's Taxonomy (1956; Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001) — calibrates cognitive depth of technical questions to seniority.
• GROW (Whitmore) — coaching cycle turning gaps into action; one "Will" step per weak competency.
• Validity basis: the structured interview is among the highest-validity selection methods (Schmidt & Hunter meta-analysis).