Practice the interview out loud, for the job you actually applied to
Pick a job from your tracker and a round. An interviewer asks questions drawn from that posting and your own record, you answer by voice, and you hear back what worked, what to change and how you sounded.
Practice the round before it happens.
Pick a job and a round. Answer out loud, like it's the real thing. Practice only, never a live aid.
- It asks, you talk. Questions are spoken; answers are transcribed.
- It hears how you said it. Pace, fillers and long pauses.
- Scored 1 to 5, with a stronger answer built only from your own record.
A mock interview card: the interviewer asks a hiring-manager question, the answer is recorded and transcribed with filler words highlighted, then scored 4 out of 5 with pace, filler count and a stronger answer.
How one round goes
A round is a handful of questions about one specific job, asked one at a time. It takes about as long as a short phone screen.
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Pick a job and a round
Open a job in your tracker and choose the kind of interview: recruiter screen, hiring manager, technical, behavioral or final round. The questions come from that job's description, so the job needs its posting text saved, and DonutApply needs to know something about you, from a resume, your profile or your notes.
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Choose how long and how you answer
Three, five or eight questions. Then either type, record with the mic and tidy the words afterwards, or go hands-free: the interviewer reads each question aloud and you just talk. It stops listening when you have been quiet for three, five or eight seconds, your choice.
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Answer, then read the feedback
After every answer you get a score from 1 to 5, what worked, what to change and, when your record allows it, a stronger version of your own answer. If you spoke, there is a line on how it sounded too. The next question waits until you press Continue, so you can read first. Feedback is shown, not spoken.
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Finish with a short debrief
A summary of how the round went, what you did well and what to practice first. It is added as a note on the job's timeline, and the whole round, every answer with its feedback, is kept under Past rounds so you can compare next week's attempt.
Five rounds, five different interviewers
A recruiter and a VP do not ask the same things, so each round has its own questions and its own idea of a good answer. Each one is played by a different animal, picked at random each time, with a voice of its own.
| Round | What it asks about | A strong answer |
|---|---|---|
| Recruiter screen | Your background, why this company and role, what you want next, logistics | Short, specific, tied back to the role |
| Hiring manager | How you did the work this role needs; follows up on anything vague | A real situation, what you did yourself, the result |
| Technical | The skills and problems the posting names, answered out loud, never live coding | Correct, reasons through tradeoffs, says where the experience comes from |
| Behavioral | “Tell me about a time…” stories on conflict, failure and ownership | Situation, task, action, result |
| Final round | Judgment, priorities, leading people, why this company | Perspective beyond your own tasks, grounded in what you have done |
What it hears in a spoken answer
Your recording is turned into text, and the timing of the words is measured. That is enough to tell you four plain things.
- Pace
- Words a minute while you are actually talking. Around 130 to 160 is easy to follow.
- Filler words
- Every um, uh and you know, counted, with the ones you lean on most.
- Long pauses
- Silences of two and a half seconds or more in the middle of an answer.
- Length
- Most answers land in a minute or two; a recruiter screen wants shorter.
It does not judge your voice, accent, eye contact or how nervous you sound, and the recording itself is thrown away once it has been read.
A timeline of a spoken answer. The words play across it, small flags mark two “um”s and an “uh”, and a gap in the middle is marked as a long pause. Below it: a pace of 148 words a minute, three fillers and one long pause.
What the feedback is built from, and where it stops
The interviewer reads the job's description, your resume for that job (or your default one), your profile and your notes. Those are the only facts it has about you. It will not invent an employer, a project or a number for you.
That shapes the “stronger answer”. It is your own answer rebuilt from what your record says, written the way you would say it. If the record has nothing to build from, that box stays empty and you are told how you could prepare an honest answer instead. A number that appears in neither your record nor your answer gets the whole suggestion dropped. The posting's own figures are not yours, so they do not count.
The limits are worth knowing. The score is one model's judgment of one answer, useful for spotting what to fix and not a prediction of what a real interviewer will say. A recording can run up to about five minutes. If the browser has no microphone access, you can type every answer instead. And it is for practice only: it is not meant to be open during a real interview.
Pro. Mock interviews are part of the $19 a month plan. Free covers browsing and tracking jobs, but not this.
Mock interview questions
Can I practice without a microphone?
Yes. Type each answer. You still get the score, what worked, what to change and the debrief. Only the notes on pace, filler words and pauses need a spoken answer.
Does it write my answers for me?
It shows how your own answer could be stronger, using only what your answer and your record say. It does not make up experience, and it leaves the suggestion blank when there is nothing true to build it from.
Does it keep my recordings?
No. A recording is turned into text and discarded. When you finish a round, your answers, the feedback and the summary are saved to that job so you can read them again; delete the job and they go with it.
Which jobs can I practice for?
Any job in your tracker that has its description saved, whether you typed it in or saved it from the job listings. Without the posting text there is nothing for the questions to be about.
Can I use it during a real interview?
It is built for practice before the interview, not as a live aid during one.
Donut apply so hard.
Go take a nap.
We’ll keep looking.
Fresh jobs keep arriving while you sleep. When you're up, the forms fill in minutes and the tracker keeps itself tidy.
Start on Free; Pro is $19 a month when you want it.