Type: Product Management
HackerRank Community’s AI-powered mock interviews have helped thousands of aspiring developers overcome interview anxiety and prepare for technical interviews and became the first paid offering in HackerRank’s 10-year history as a previously free product ecosystem.
As Product Manager, I co-led the team that built this feature end to end, from user research and problem discovery to lo-fi design, technical brainstorming, and post-launch marketing. Here’s a quick overview of how the mock interview experience came to life.
First, what is HackerRank Community?
It’s a platform used by developers to practice coding and by companies to assess technical talent. With a 25-million–strong user base - primarily students, hobbyist programmers, and aspiring software engineers - I stepped in as Product Manager and interviewed hundreds of active users to understand their pain points and define core user personas.
One problem stood out above all: interview anxiety. The job search is stressful, but users emphasized that technical interviews felt especially daunting.
Existing solutions had clear gaps. Interviewing.io offered high-quality mock interviews but was priced out of reach for most at $220 per session, while Google’s Interview Warmup was free but too generic and lacked the depth needed for technical preparation.
The solution
To address the interview anxiety users consistently reported, we developed AI-powered mock interviews. We launched four interview types - Software Engineer (coding), Front-end (React), System Design, and Back-end (Node.js), each offering a timed interview environment, dynamic question sets, an AI voice-based interviewer, an IDE/whiteboard, and a detailed post-interview feedback report.
Launched at HackerRank's AI day
We first launched the tool to ~2,000 beta users during HackerRank’s AI Day. Nearly 70% tried at least one mock interview within the first week.
Gradually scaled to millions of users
As we expanded access, we shipped continuous fixes and improvements while tracking our core metric i.e. the Developer Love Index (DLI), a 5-point rating users left after each mock interview.
Became HRC's first paid offering
Although HackerRank had always been free, users repeatedly asked for more mock interview attempts, some even offering to pay. Based on this demand, we introduced a paywall and continued building the feature publicly to stay transparent with our users.
Perhaps even more rewarding than the revenue growth was hearing from users who said the mock interviews helped them walk into real interviews with greater confidence. Some even credited the tool for helping them land job offers.