The Complete Blueprint for Using AI in Your Interview Process
Part 1: Preparation—Using AI for Research, Applications & Interview Prep
Hey, Prasad here 👋 I’m the voice behind the weekly newsletter “Big Tech Careers.”
In this week’s article, I share how to use AI to prepare better for your interviews - the right way!
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When Anthropic—the company behind Claude—published their candidate AI guidance, they did something remarkable: they showed us exactly how to use AI in interviews the right way.
Their approach is straightforward: use AI to augment your preparation and refine your communication, but never to replace your authentic self. They encourage you to collaborate with Claude throughout the hiring process—except during assessments and live interviews where they want to see how YOU think.
This isn’t just good advice for applying to Anthropic. It’s a blueprint for how you should approach AI-assisted interview preparation anywhere. And since you likely use (or will use) AI tools in your actual job, learning to collaborate with AI effectively during interviews is itself a valuable skill.
This guide expands on Anthropic’s framework with stage-by-stage strategies, specific prompts you can use with AI assistants, and practical tips tailored for tech and leadership roles.
What You’ll Learn in This Two-Part Series
Part 1 (This Article): The Preparation Stages
Stage 1: Pre-Application Research & Strategy
Stage 2: Application Materials (Resume & Cover Letter)
Stage 3: Take-Home Assessments & Technical Challenges
Stage 4: Interview Preparation
Part 2 (Next Article): The Execution Stages
Stage 5: During the Interview Process
Stage 6: Post-Interview Follow-Up
Stage 7: Offer Negotiation
Plus: Golden rules and best practices!
This first article focuses on how to use AI assistants to prepare before you ever speak to an interviewer. Part 2 will cover what to do during and after your interviews.
The Anthropic Framework
Before we dive deep, here’s what Anthropic recommends in their guidance on How to collaborate with Claude during our hiring process:
✅ When to Use Claude:
When applying (resume, cover letter, application questions): Create the first drafts yourself, then use Claude to refine it. They want to see your real experience, but Claude can polish how you communicate about your work.
Interview Prep: Use Claude to research Anthropic, practice your answers, and prepare questions.
Example prompt from Anthropic: “Please review my resume and the job description. Identify the experiences I should highlight in my cover letter that align most with the job requirements.”
❌ When NOT to Use Claude:
Take-home assessments: Complete these without Claude unless they indicate otherwise. They’ll be clear when AI is allowed.
Live interviews: This is all you—no AI assistance unless they indicate otherwise.
Real Examples from Anthropic’s Guidance:
The Philosophy: Think of AI as your collaborator in showcasing your authentic story, not as a replacement for your experience or thinking.
Now, let’s explore how to apply these principles using your preferred AI assistant at every stage of your interview journey.
Stage 1: Pre-Application Research & Strategy
The Goal: Understand the company, role, and market landscape to position yourself strategically.
What AI Assistants Can Do
AI excels at synthesizing information from multiple sources, identifying patterns, and helping you understand where your experience intersects with opportunity.
Practical Approach
Example Prompts:
“Analyze [Company Name]’s engineering blog posts from the past year.
What are their key technical priorities? What does this tell me about
the challenges their engineering teams are likely facing?”“Based on this job description for a Senior Engineering Manager role,
what are the top 3 strategic challenges this person will likely face in
their first 90 days? What leadership qualities are they really looking
for beyond what’s explicitly stated?”“Help me understand the competitive landscape for [Company]. Who are their main competitors, what differentiates them, and what would a technical leader need to know about the market they operate in?”What NOT to Do: Don’t ask AI to fabricate opinions about the company or generate generic “I’m excited about...” statements. Use it for research and analysis, not authenticity replacement.
Stage 2: Application Materials (Resume & Cover Letter)
The Goal: Communicate your genuine experience clearly and compellingly.
The Right Approach
This is where Anthropic’s guidance is crystal clear: create your first draft yourself, then use AI to refine it. This principle applies regardless of which AI assistant you use.
Practical Approach
The Right Sequence:
You draft first (your experiences, your voice, your story)
AI refines second (clarity, impact, alignment)
Example Prompts:
“I’ve attached my resume and the job description for a Staff Engineer role. Which 3-4 experiences from my background are most relevant to this position? Help me understand why these experiences matter for this specific role, so I can highlight them authentically in my cover letter.”“Here’s a bullet point from my resume: ‘Led team through cloud migration
that reduced infrastructure costs.’ Help me think of questions to ask myself to better quantify the impact, technical complexity, and business value of this work. Don’t rewrite it—help me uncover what I should include.”“I’ve drafted this cover letter. Please review it and identify: (1) places where my authentic voice comes through, (2) sections that sound generic or AI-generated that I should rewrite, and (3) experiences I mentioned that deserve more detail or context.”For Leadership Roles:
“I managed a team through an organizational restructure that resulted in
20% better retention and improved delivery timelines. Help me articulate
the leadership challenges involved and the outcomes in a way that shows
strategic thinking and emotional intelligence, not just task management.”Pro Tip: Use AI to bridge the gap between technical work and business impact. Many engineers undersell their contributions because they focus on “what” rather than “why it mattered.”
Remember the Anthropic Standard:
✅ Do This: Draft about your actual migration project, then ask: “Help me think of ways to quantify the impact of the platform migration that I led.”
❌ Not This: “Write a cover letter for an AI safety researcher position at Anthropic.” (Generic content with experiences you haven’t actually had)
Stage 3: Take-Home Assessments & Technical Challenges
The Goal: Demonstrate your actual skills and problem-solving approach.
The Industry Standard
Complete these without AI unless explicitly told otherwise. Companies want to assess your unique skills and strengths. They’ll be clear when AI is allowed (example: “You may use AI assistants for this coding challenge”).
When AI is NOT Allowed
This is your opportunity to show how YOU think, code, and solve problems. Using AI here undermines the entire purpose of the assessment.
If You’re Uncertain:
Check the assessment instructions carefully
Ask your recruiter explicitly: “Does this company allow AI assistance for this assessment?”
When in doubt, assume it’s not allowed
Acceptable Use (if you must verify something):
Looking up syntax you’ve forgotten
Checking documentation for a library
Reviewing best practices you’re uncertain about
Not Acceptable:
Having AI write your code
Using AI to solve the core problem
Copy-pasting AI solutions and tweaking them
When AI IS Allowed (Increasingly Common)
Some forward-thinking companies explicitly permit AI use to see how you collaborate with it.
Example Prompts for Allowed AI Use:
“Review this code I wrote for edge cases and potential bugs. Don’t fix
them—just point them out so I can address them myself and learn from them.”“I’m deciding between approach A (event-driven) and approach B (polling)
for this real-time data problem. What are the tradeoffs I should consider for a system handling 10M daily active users? Help me think through this, but I want to make the final decision.”“Explain how I could test this distributed system implementation. What
test cases would demonstrate that I’ve thought through failure modes?”Pro Tip for Leadership Assessments: If you’re doing a case study or strategic analysis, use AI to stress-test your thinking, not replace it. Ask it to challenge your assumptions or identify blind spots in your analysis.
Stage 4: Interview Preparation
The Goal: Walk into interviews confident, prepared, and ready to showcase your authentic self.
The Best Practice
This is where I encourage you to actively use AI. Research the company, practice your answers, and prepare thoughtful questions.
Practical Approach with AI Assistants
A. Company Deep Dive & Study Guide Creation
Example Prompts:
“Create a comprehensive study guide for interviewing for a Staff Engineer role at [Company]. Include: their tech stack, recent product launches, engineering culture signals from blog posts and social media, potential technical challenges they’re facing based on their growth stage, and thoughtful questions I could ask that demonstrate strategic thinking.”“Based on [Company]’s recent blog posts, public talks, and product
announcements, what are the top 3 strategic priorities for their
engineering organization right now? What technical challenges would
naturally emerge from these priorities?”B. Technical Review & System Design Practice
Example Prompts:
“I’m interviewing for a distributed systems role. Create a study plan
covering: key concepts I should review, common pitfalls in system design
interviews, and 5 practice problems with increasing complexity. For each
concept, explain it and then give me a follow-up question to test my
understanding.”“Explain the tradeoffs between SQL and NoSQL databases for a high-write,
eventual consistency scenario. Then give me 3 follow-up questions an
interviewer might ask to test my depth of understanding. After I answer
each one, tell me what I missed.”“I need to prepare for system design questions about scaling from 1M to
100M users. Walk me through the key inflection points and architectural
decisions that matter at each stage. Then quiz me on the tradeoffs.”C. Behavioral Interview Practice
Example Prompts:
“I need to prepare STAR-method examples for leadership interviews. Here
are my key experiences: [list them]. Help me identify which experiences
best demonstrate: conflict resolution, scaling teams through hypergrowth, strategic decision-making under uncertainty, and influencing without authority. For each category, ask me probing questions to help me develop a more complete story.”“Act as an interviewer for a VP of Engineering role. Ask me a behavioral
question about a time I had to make a difficult technical vs. business
tradeoff. After I respond, give me specific feedback on: (1) what I did
well, (2) what I could improve, (3) follow-up questions I should be
prepared for, and (4) whether my answer demonstrated the leadership
level expected for this role.”D. Question Preparation for Interviewers
Example Prompts:
“Based on this VP of Engineering job description and what’s publicly known about [Company]’s challenges, generate 10 thoughtful questions I could ask.
Organize them by: technical strategy, team culture, role expectations, and company trajectory. For each question, explain what insight I’m trying to gain and why it matters.”“I’m interviewing with the CTO. Help me prepare 5 questions that would
demonstrate that I’ve thought deeply about their technical challenges and that I’m thinking at the right level for a senior leadership role.”Pro Tip: Don’t just prepare answers—prepare the thinking behind your answers. Use AI to help you articulate your problem-solving process, not memorize scripts. The best interviews feel like collaborative problem-solving, not Q&A sessions.
The Mindset Shift: AI as Your Thought Partner
The best candidates aren’t using AI as a crutch—they’re using it as a thought partner and coach who:
Helps you see your blind spots in your own experience and preparation
Pushes you to articulate your thinking more clearly and at the right level
Provides a safe space to practice and fail without judgment
Offers different perspectives you might not have considered
Stress-tests your assumptions and helps you think more rigorously
But just like a coach doesn’t run the race for you, AI shouldn’t interview for you.
Practical Exercise: Your First AI-Assisted Prep Session
Ready to get started? Here’s a 30-minute exercise to practice:
Step 1: Find a real job posting you’re interested in (5 minutes)
Step 2: Use this prompt with your preferred AI assistant (10 minutes):
“I’m applying for this role: [paste job description]. Help me create a
preparation plan that covers: (1) company research areas I should focus on, (2) technical concepts I should review, (3) experiences from my background I should prepare to discuss, and (4) thoughtful questions I could ask. Make this specific to THIS role, not generic interview advice.”Step 3: Review the AI’s response and identify (10 minutes):
What insights surprised you?
What research can you do now?
What experiences should you reflect on more deeply?
What would you need to adjust to make this prep plan authentically yours?
Step 4: Try one more focused prompt (5 minutes):
“Based on this company research [paste what you learned], what strategic
challenges would a [your role] likely face in their first 6 months? Help
me think through how my experience relates to these challenges.”This exercise shows you how AI can accelerate your preparation while keeping YOUR experiences and thinking at the center.
Key Takeaways from Part 1
✅ Do in Preparation Stages:
Use AI extensively for research and company analysis
Draft your application materials first, then refine with AI
Respect assessment guidelines strictly—assume no AI unless told otherwise
Practice interviews with AI to build confidence and refine your stories
Use AI to identify gaps in your preparation
❌ Don’t in Preparation Stages:
Let AI write your cover letter or create fake experiences
Use AI during assessments without explicit permission
Memorize AI-generated answers without making them your own
Skip the drafting step and go straight to AI refinement
Coming Up in Part 2
In the next article, I’ll cover the execution stages:
Stage 5: What to do (and not do) during live interviews
Stage 6: Crafting effective post-interview follow-ups with AI
Stage 7: Using AI to navigate offer negotiations
Plus: Golden rules for AI-assisted interviewing and why Anthropic’s framework matters for everyone
Very helpful article