Interview preparation

You can know the answer and still lose the interview.

That's the part most preparation ignores. People grind through question banks for two months, walk into the room, and fall apart at "so, tell me about yourself." Or they solve the problem correctly in silence and get rejected for not explaining their thinking.

Interviewing is a separate skill from the skill you're being interviewed on. It has to be practised separately, out loud, in front of another person.

That's what this is for.

Where interviews actually go wrong

From mentors who sit on the other side of the table:

You can do the work but can't describe the work. You've built things and you narrate them as a list of tools instead of a set of decisions.

You go quiet when you're thinking. The interviewer can't read your mind, so silence reads as "no idea."

You have no story. Your resume is a set of true facts with no thread connecting them, and you've never said the thread out loud.

You answer the question you rehearsed instead of the question you were asked.

You freeze on follow ups. The first answer was fine. The "why did you do it that way?" is what breaks you.

You've never said any of this to a human being before. The first time you practise should not be the real thing.

What you get here

Prep tracks

A structured path per role. What to revise, in what order, over four to eight weeks, with a mock interview at the end of each phase. Built by mentors who hire for that role.

Mock interviews with real practitioners

A live session with someone who conducts interviews for the field you're targeting. They run it like the real one, then break down what worked and what didn't. Blunt feedback, not encouragement.

Question banks that stay current

Questions people were actually asked recently, grouped by company type and difficulty, with notes on what the interviewer is really testing. Updated as the community reports back.

Practice partners

The community pairs people up to interview each other. Explaining a concept to a peer who's allowed to say "I don't follow" is one of the fastest ways to find the holes in your own understanding.

Doubt clearing

Stuck on a concept the night before? Ask in the group. Mentors and other students are in there.

Tracks

Software engineering. DSA and problem solving, language fundamentals, system design for junior and mid roles, projects and resume review, behavioural rounds.

Data. SQL rounds, statistics and probability, case studies, Python, business sense questions, take home assignments.

Product management. Product sense, design questions, estimation, metrics and analytics, execution and prioritisation, behavioural.

Marketing and growth. Channel knowledge, campaign case studies, analytics, portfolio walkthrough, the "how would you grow this" question.

Business, finance and consulting. Case interviews, guesstimates, technical finance rounds, fit and behavioural.

Campus placements. Aptitude, group discussions, technical rounds, HR rounds, and how to interview when your only projects are academic ones.

Competitive exams and academic vivas. Interview and viva stages for exams, research interviews, and how to defend your project or thesis.

A prep plan that works

Roughly six weeks, assuming you have a job or classes. Compress it if you have a date already.

Week 1 · Find out where you stand. One mock interview before you've prepared anything. It will go badly. That's the point. You now know exactly what to fix instead of guessing.

Week 2 to 3 · Fix the gaps. Only the ones the mock exposed. Not everything. Most people over prepare on what they're already good at because it feels nice.

Week 4 · Build your stories. Four or five real examples from your work, each one able to survive three follow up questions. This is the single highest return week and almost everyone skips it.

Week 5 · Mock again, harder. With a different mentor if you can. Different people probe differently.

Week 6 · Rehearse, don't cram. Timing, opening, questions you'll ask them, and the walkthrough of your main project. Learning new material in the final week mostly just makes you anxious.

How a mock interview runs

You book a slot with a mentor in your field and tell them what role you're targeting.

They run 30 to 45 minutes as a real interview, including the awkward follow ups. No hints, no softening.

Then they break it down: what you got right, where you lost them, what your answers signalled that you didn't intend, and what to fix before the real one.

You get notes you can act on. Then you go and do the fixing, and come back.

Who's on the other side

Shattak mentors qualify by having actually done it. That means around five or more years of relevant experience, a track record at a company that hires seriously, cleared competitive exams or interviews themselves, or proven success in freelancing and building their own thing.

The bar isn't years alone. It's whether they've seen enough real outcomes to tell you something useful. Someone who has personally rejected a hundred candidates knows things a textbook can't teach you.

What it costs

The same as everything else on Shattak. Nothing upfront.

You prepare, you do the mocks, you go to the interview. Afterwards, if the platform was worth something to you, you decide what to pay. That can be ₹0 and nobody will ask you about it.

We think people pay honestly when they've already got the value. That's the whole bet the platform is built on.

FAQ

I don't have an interview scheduled yet. Should I still prep? Yes, and this is the better time to do it. Preparation is much less effective when it's compressed into the week before.

I have an interview in four days. Do one mock immediately, fix only the biggest problem it reveals, and rehearse your project walkthrough. Skip the rest.

I have no work experience. Then your projects are your experience, and how you talk about them is everything. The campus track covers exactly this.

Can I do mocks in Hindi or another language? Depends on mentor availability. Ask in the community and we'll try to match you.

I keep reaching the final round and getting rejected. That's usually a communication or fit problem, not a knowledge problem. A mock with a senior mentor is the fastest way to find out which.

Start

[Pick a prep track →] [Book a mock interview →] [Join the community →]