# Mockingbird > Stop going blank in interviews. Practise answering out loud, before the real thing. A web app for practising behavioural interview questions out loud, on camera, with feedback that quotes your own words. ## Key facts - Category: behavioural (competency) interview practice, web app - How it works: pick a role and level, hear a question read aloud, record a timed answer on camera, get feedback, retry - Pricing: first interview free, no card. Then packs: Starter pack $15.00 for 3 interviews; Focus pack $39.00 for 10 interviews; Intensive pack $79.00 for 25 interviews. No subscription, credits never expire, retries are free - Does not: analyse voice tone, pitch, face, eye contact or posture; help during live interviews; predict hiring decisions ## What it measures - Measured: Counted straight from your transcript: pace (110–170 words a minute is comfortable), filler words, pauses over 1.5s, length, and the hedging, committing and “I” vs “we” words you used. - Scored: Six rubric scores out of 5: relevance, specificity, structure, clarity, ownership and results. Every point quotes the line it’s based on. - Read from word choice: How confident, assertive and humble the wording comes across, shown as a range rather than a score to max out, with the counted words behind it. - Never analysed: your voice’s tone, pitch or volume, your face, eye contact or body language. Nothing here predicts an interviewer’s decision either. ## What you get in each practice session - Behavioural questions for your role and level, read out loud like a real interviewer - Real-pressure reps: camera on, countdown, time limit - A score out of 5 on six things interviewers listen for, with a quote from your answer behind every point - Every hedge, filler and long pause, linked to the moment in your replay - How your wording came across: confident, assertive, humble, with the counted words behind each reading - A STAR outline and a drill for every answer - Up to 5 reps per question at no extra cost - Your progress tracked across reps and sessions ## Why regular reps work - Thinking about it isn’t training: Running answers in your head feels like prep, but your head quietly fixes every sentence. Out loud is where the hedges, restarts and detours show up, so it’s the only place you can work on them. - Pressure finds the gaps: Nerves on their own aren’t the problem. They expose the answers you haven’t said before, which is when your mind goes blank. A camera and a clock give you that pressure early, while it’s cheap. - You can’t fix what you can’t see: Fillers and hedges are hard to notice while you’re talking. Seeing them counted and timestamped turns “I rambled” into something specific to work on next rep. - Little and often beats a night-before cram: Short, regular sessions give each round of feedback time to sink in. By the real interview, your best answers are habits, not things you’re trying to remember. ## Compared with other ways to practise | | Mockingbird | Rehearsing in your head | A friend as interviewer | Typing into a chatbot | |---|---|---|---|---| | Practise out loud, under pressure | Yes | No | Yes | No | | Feedback that quotes what you actually said | Yes | No | Sometimes | Typed words only | | Counts hedges, fillers and long pauses | Yes | No | No | No | | Replay the exact moment it went wrong | Yes | No | No | No | | Same rubric every rep, so progress is comparable | Yes | No | No | No | | Ready for a session at 11pm | Yes | Yes | Rarely | Yes | ## FAQ ### What is Mockingbird? Mockingbird helps you stop going blank in behavioural interviews (“Tell me about a time…”) by practising your answers out loud first. You hear a question, answer it out loud on camera against the clock, and get feedback that quotes your own words: six rubric scores, your pace, fillers and pauses, and how confident your wording came across. Then you take another rep and see what changed. ### Who is it for? Anyone who wants to walk into a behavioural or competency interview prepared: graduates, career changers, and experienced people going for a step up. Questions are tailored to the role and level you enter, from entry level to director. ### Why practise out loud instead of writing answers down? Because the interviewer only hears what you say. Writing an answer and saying it under pressure are different skills: spoken answers run longer, pick up hedges like “kind of” and “I guess”, and lose their structure when you’re nervous. You only find and fix those things by speaking, and each rep makes the answer easier to say. ### How often should I practise? Little and often. One session a week keeps you interview ready. Once an interview is booked, a session every day or two, re-repping your weakest answer each time, works better than one long cram the night before. A standard session is 5 questions and takes about 20 minutes. ### I go blank or ramble when I’m nervous. Will this help? Practising under some pressure helps you get used to it. Each session puts a camera and a clock on you, shows exactly where an answer stalled or drifted, and lets you try it again straight away. It can’t promise you won’t feel nervous, but it means your answers are ones you’ve already said, not ones you’re making up on the spot. ### How is it different from practising with ChatGPT or a friend? A chatbot sees typed words, not how you speak under time pressure. A friend is kind, busy, and can’t replay the moment you lost the thread. Mockingbird records you, counts every hedge, filler and long pause, scores the answer against the same rubric every time, and links each point to the moment in your replay, so you can see progress across reps. ### Does it help me during a live interview? No. Mockingbird is for training only. It doesn’t listen in or suggest answers during real interviews. The goal is that you can say your answers yourself, in your own words. ### Does it analyse my voice, face or body language? No. All feedback comes from the words you said and their timing. Nothing analyses your voice’s tone, pitch or volume, your face, eye contact or posture. The camera is there so practice feels like the real thing and so you can watch your replay. ### What feedback do I get after each answer? An overall verdict, a score out of 5 for relevance, specificity, structure, clarity, ownership and results, your strengths, up to three prioritised fixes with quotes from your answer, a STAR outline, a drill, and replayable moments. You also get pace, filler words, pauses over 1.5 seconds and how confident, assertive and humble the wording reads. ### Does it use AI? Yes, in three places: a language model tailors questions from a curated bank of behavioural prompts, a speech-to-text model transcribes your answer, and a language model writes feedback against a fixed rubric. Pace, fillers, pauses and the language-marker counts are calculated directly from the transcript, not guessed. ### How long is a session? A standard session is 5 questions and takes about 20 minutes. You can choose 3 to 8 questions and an answer time limit between 1.5 and 5 minutes. ### How much does it cost? Your first session is free, with no card required. After that you buy packs of practice interviews (3 for $15.00, 10 for $39.00, 25 for $79.00). One credit is one full session. There’s no subscription, credits don’t expire, and extra reps on an answer (up to 5 per question) never cost more. ### Will it guarantee I get the job? No tool can. Mockingbird helps you give clearer, better-structured answers and shows whether they’re improving, so you walk in prepared. Hiring decisions depend on far more than one answer. ### What happens to my recordings? Recordings are stored privately and played back through short-lived links only you can open. Video is deleted automatically after 30 days; transcripts and feedback stay so you can track progress. You can delete a session or your whole account at any time. ### What do I need? A camera and microphone (a laptop or desktop works best), and a recent version of Chrome, Edge or Safari. Recordings are saved in your browser until they finish uploading, so a reload won’t lose a finished answer. ## Links - [Home](https://uat.mocking-bird.io/): overview, pricing and FAQ - [Create a free account](https://uat.mocking-bird.io/sign-up) - [Support](mailto:support@mocking-bird.io)