Give it a decision to defend.
Use a fictional submission or a sample assessment. For example, the candidate chose a background queue for a small invitation flow. Ask the partner to play the candidate and explain that choice.
Spend ten minutes exploring the reasoning. Follow the answer you receive, ask for evidence and leave room for uncertainty. Avoid feeding it the answer you want to hear.
A prompt to try
Play a fictional engineering candidate discussing this assessment: [brief and sample decisions]. Answer one question at a time. Give plausible answers with some incomplete reasoning, so I have to choose useful follow-ups. Do not coach me during the interview. When I say “debrief”, review my questions: where I led you, what I failed to explore and where I asked for concrete evidence. Use examples from our conversation.
Review your questions.
The debrief should point to moments in the rehearsal. Treat its feedback as a suggestion to check, rather than an objective measure of your interviewing ability.
- Did you ask why a choice fitted the constraints, or signal that you disliked it?
- Did you distinguish something the candidate tested from something they assumed?
- Did a useful follow-up emerge from their answer?
- Did you leave time for the candidate’s questions about your team?
Take a few prompts into the room.
Choose two or three things to remember from the rehearsal. You might need to ask more about failure recovery, stop interrupting or give a candidate time to think when a requirement changes.
Keep the candidate’s interview guide open as a reminder of the decisions you want to discuss. Follow their answers and ask further questions when needed.
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