Interview Prep

Interview Prep creates an Interview Prep Notes document for one candidate and one job, tailored to the interview round you choose. The finished document is saved on the candidate’s Documents tab.

Before you start

• Interview Prep is always tied to a job. If you open the profile from a job pipeline, Scout uses that job. Otherwise Scout asks you to pick a job first and adds the candidate to it if needed.
• Generation runs in the background. You can close the dialog and keep working.
• You can start a prep from the profile menu, from the Interviews & Certifications tab, from the Candidate Report dialog, from a candidate card menu in a job pipeline, or by asking Ask AI.

Steps

GENERATE Interview Prep from the profile menu

1. Open the candidate profile (see Candidate Profile).
2. Click the three dots (…) button in the profile header.
3. Open Generate and click Interview Prep.
4. If the candidate is not already linked to a job, the Interview Prep job picker opens (“Select a job to prepare for the interview.”). Choose a job and click Continue. If the candidate is not on that job yet, the button reads Add & Continue and adds them to it.
5. In the Interview Prep dialog, choose the Interview round: Recruiter screen, Hiring manager, Technical screen, Coding, System design, Behavioral, Panel, Final or Other. If you choose Other, type a Custom round name (up to 120 characters).
6. Optional: add Interviewers. Click Add interviewer, then enter a Name and an optional Role (optional). Names are used to tailor the questions and are never printed in the document. With interviewers added, the Look up interviewers on the public web switch lets you turn off public web research.
7. Optional: set the Interview date and Focus areas (“Topics to emphasise”).
8. Optional: open Add context and fill in either box:
   • Job context (shared with the job team) is saved as a job note visible to the team. Keep candidate details out of it.
   • Notes about this candidate (private to this profile). Prep also uses this candidate’s notes for the job and recent general notes.
9. Click Generate Interview Prep.

WATCH progress and open the result

1. The dialog shows Putting your prep together with three steps: Gathering context, Researching the company and Writing your prep. You can close the window. It keeps running in the background and a progress notification tracks it.
2. When it finishes, the dialog shows Your prep is ready and “Saved to Documents as Interview Prep Notes.”
3. Click Open in Documents to go to the candidate’s Documents tab, where the new document is highlighted. Or click Prepare another round to start another run.
4. If you turned on the Interview Prep ready alert in Settings > General, Scout also notifies you when a prep finishes (“When a candidate’s Interview Prep document finishes generating.”).

VIEW earlier preps

1. On the profile, open the Interviews & Certifications tab. This tab is shown when AI interview scheduling is not disabled for your account.
2. Find Interview Prep History. Each run shows its round, when it was created and a status of Queued, In progress, Ready or Failed. Long lists are paged three at a time with Previous and Next.
3. On a ready run, click View in Documents to open the document, or the download icon to save it.
4. Click Regenerate to create a new version with the same inputs. On a failed run the button reads Retry.
5. If there are no runs yet, the section shows “No Interview Prep notes yet.” with a Generate button. The tab also has a Generate Interview Prep button.

You can also click Regenerate next to an Interview Prep Notes document in the Documents tab.

GENERATE Interview Prep with Ask AI

1. Open Ask AI in the web app, or message Scout on WhatsApp (see Ask AI).
2. Ask for a prep pack or interview notes for a candidate and job, for example “Prepare interview notes for Jane Tan for the Backend Engineer job, technical screen.”
3. If you did not name the round, Scout lists the nine rounds and asks which one. If you pick Other, it asks “What is the name of this interview round?”. If the job is unclear, it lists the candidate’s jobs and asks “Which job is this for?”
4. If the candidate is not on the job yet, Scout asks you to confirm adding them and generating the notes. Nothing is added without your yes.
5. Scout replies that the run is queued and that it will appear under Documents as Interview Prep Notes. Context you give in chat is used for that run only and is not saved as notes.

Note For quick talking points in chat with no document, ask Ask AI for interview questions or a candidate brief instead. The document route is used when you ask for notes, a prep pack or a specific round.

What you should see

• An Interview Prep Notes document in the candidate’s Documents tab, a PDF you can preview or download.
• A run listed in Interview Prep History with the status Ready.

Common problems

Pro Sourcing Tip

Add the interviewer’s name and role. Scout uses them to tailor the questions, and it never prints the names in the document.

Related pages

• Candidate Profile
• Unified Inbox
• Ask AI
• Scheduled Interviews
• Settings