Interviews overview

Use Interviews to work through an architecture problem with a candidate and keep the drawing alongside the panel's evidence. Lanefold, a fictional freight company, could use a Dispatch Service design exercise when hiring a backend engineer.

Practice interviews are available on every plan. Creating interviews with candidates outside your organization requires Enterprise or an active Interviews add-on. Viewing interviews requires interviews:read; creating and running them requires interviews:run. Viewing a particular interview also requires panel membership or interviews:results.

Buy or manage the Interviews add-on under Organization Settings > Billing. This requires billing:manage. See plans and billing for allowances and subscription controls.

Turn interviews on

1. Open the organization name in the sidebar, then select Organization Settings > Interviews.
2. Turn on Enable Interviews and select Save changes. This requires interviews:manage.
3. Open Interviews in the sidebar. Select Browse kits to prepare an exercise, or New interview to create a session.

The organization switch applies to both practice and outside-candidate interviews. When it's off, interview routes, candidate links and interview AI are unavailable.

Choose who participates

The panel uses signed-in accounts to prepare the interview, control prompts, take notes and submit scorecards. You must be an interviewer on that interview's panel to run it, even if you're an organization Owner or Admin. A shadow with interviews:run can submit a scorecard for calibration; an observer can't score.

Candidates receive a separate link to the session canvas and revealed prompts. Outside candidates don't need an ArchDocs account. A practice candidate must sign in as the selected organization member and can't also be on the initial panel.

An observer link opens a read-only view of the session canvas and revealed prompts, with the same cursor visibility as the candidate. Observers' own cursors aren't shown. For practice interviews, the observer must sign in as a current organization member. Sharing an observer link doesn't give someone panel access.

The candidate session and panel cockpit need a laptop or desktop with a viewport at least 768px wide. Smaller viewports show a notice with Copy link instead of opening the session.

Practice before interviewing candidates

Choose A teammate (practice) when creating an interview. Free, Team and Business allow two practice interviews created per UTC calendar month; Enterprise has no practice limit. Deleting a practice interview doesn't give its slot back. Practice and outside-candidate usage are counted separately.

Practice interviews use the same kit, consent, scoring and replay controls. They're marked Practice, and their Markdown and PDF debriefs have a practice interview title. They don't send completion webhooks. Invitation and reminder emails still apply.

Use AI without automated scoring

AI can draft kits, suggest follow-up probes and summarize evidence for a debrief. AI never scores candidates or makes hiring recommendations. Every rating and recommendation comes from a named person.

Interview AI requires Team or above, ai:use and available AI credits. When the included credits run out, requests continue only if paid overage is on and under its cap. The Interviews add-on doesn't add AI to Free.

Start by building a kit, then schedule an interview. Read the candidate experience before sharing a link, and scoring and debrief before collecting panel feedback.