1 min lesson
The pre-interview ritual
Work through this case. "Your mock scores: debugging 5, triage 5, onsite autonomy 2. Where should almost all your remaining prep go and why?" Say what you would do and why.
Step 1 of 2
The pre-interview ritualThe two weeks before
- 1Use Cursor for real, daily, for two weeks or more. Skip the cram session. Sustained use is what produces the lived texture a recruiter listens for.
- 2Run a fresh competitive scan. Spend an hour each in Copilot, Windsurf and Claude Code so your 90-second take is current, not last quarter's.
- 3Re-run your weakest drill until it's a 4+. Reps, not reading. Treat a sub-3 on any round as a blocker a 5 elsewhere can't offset.
- 4Draft your 90-day plan. It doubles as your onsite framing and your closer in the hiring-manager round.
The 90-day plan is a multi-tool
Write one crisp answer to "what would your first 90 days look like?" Stand up signal sources, build a triage pipeline with agent assistance and ship the first weekly quality brief. It frames your onsite work and makes a strong close in the behavioral round. One artifact, two rounds.
Readiness gut check
Can you debug a gnarly Cursor bug like an engineer, rank a messy batch so the catastrophic-but-quiet wins and walk into an open problem with enough autonomy that a senior teammate would trust you with it? Any honest no is exactly where this week's reps go.