The hardest part of a coding interview isn’t just writing the code—it’s managing the conversation while you solve a hard problem.

At Intervu.dev, we’ve built an AI mock coding interviewer that doesn’t just check your syntax; it replicates the dynamics of a real interview. It interrupts, asks for clarification, hints when you’re stuck, and expects you to verify your work.

Let’s break down a real session (captured in the video above) to see how Intervu prepares you for the real thing.

1. The Ambiguous Requirement

In real interviews, problem statements are often intentionally vague. A common trap is jumping straight into coding based on assumptions. You are expected to ask clarifying questions to scope the problem correctly. Intervu forces you to build this habit by presenting problems that require active inquiry.

Candidate: “Can I assume inclusive endpoints? Also do I return a new list or modify the existing one?”

Interviewer: “Yes, you may assume inclusive endpoints. And you can return a new list if you want.”

Instead of passively receiving a perfect spec, you have to actively scope the problem. If you jump straight to coding without asking, the specific constraints might trip you up later.

2. Thinking Aloud & Course Correction

One of the most common mistakes candidates make is staying silent while thinking. Intervu encourages you to “think aloud” so the interviewer can guide you.

In our demo, the candidate starts down a suboptimal path:

Candidate: “I could append the new interval, sort, and merge. That would be O(N log N).”

The AI interviewer immediately nudges them back on track, just like a FAANG interviewer would:

Interviewer: “Given sorted input, I expect linear time.”

This feedback loop is critical. In a real interview, silence is a red flag. By articulating your thought process, you give the interviewer a chance to course-correct you before you commit to a dead-end approach. It saves you from wasting 20 minutes implementing a brute-force solution that won’t pass.

3. Structural Hints, Not Handouts

When you get stuck on the logic, Intervu doesn’t just give you the answer. It gives you a structural hint to help you unblock yourself.

Candidate: “I’m just thinking about how to structure the loop… do I need a separate flag to track when I’ve merged?”

Interviewer: “Since the input is sorted, you can process the intervals in three distinct phases.”

This hint doesn’t write the code for you. It helps you organize your thoughts: Phase 1 (Before), Phase 2 (Merge), Phase 3 (After).

4. Squashing Bugs Live

Everyone makes mistakes. The difference between a hire and a no-hire is often how you recover. In the demo, the candidate writes a bug (max instead of min for the start time) but catches it immediately while thinking aloud:

Candidate: “It should be the earliest start… oh, using max is wrong. It should be min.”

Intervu’s pressure-cooker environment trains you to self-correct in real-time. If you were silent, you might have missed this logic error until the very end. By constantly verbalizing, you catch bugs before they become compilation errors.

5. The “Dry Run” Verification

Writing the code is only half the battle. The best candidates verify their logic before running it.

Interviewer: “Great. Can you verify this logic with a concrete example?”

Candidate: “Sure. Let’s take the example [1,3] and [6,9]. If I insert [2,5], it overlaps with [1,3]. They should merge into [1,5]…”

Intervu builds the discipline of manual tracing. Many candidates rely on hitting “Run Code” to find bugs, but in a whiteboard or Google Doc interview, you don’t have a compiler. In the video, you can see the candidate verbally walking through the data flow, catching potential off-by-one errors before they become bugs. This demonstrates “code confidence”—a key trait hiring managers look for.

6. Exhaustive Testing

Finally, a solution isn’t complete without considering edge cases.

Interviewer: “Is there any other case you’d like to verify?”

Candidate: “Hmm. I should check the case where there’s no overlap at all. I’ll test with [1,2] and [3,4]. If I insert [5,6], it should just be appended at the end.”

Intervu rewards you for proactively identifying and testing edge cases (empty inputs, no overlaps, complete overlaps) just like a senior engineer would in a real setting.

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Ready to practice?

You can watch the full interaction in the video above, or start your own interview right now.