"Can you mock-interview me?" is one of the most common favours students and freshers ask of seniors, mentors, and friends who've already been through the process. It's genuinely useful — a real person asking real questions is a different kind of pressure than practising alone. But most peer mock interviews waste the interviewer's time and don't actually help the candidate, because nobody sets them up properly.

Why practising with a real person is worth doing

A real interviewer reacts. They follow up when your answer is vague, they get a puzzled look when you ramble, and they ask the awkward question you were hoping to avoid. None of that happens when you're rehearsing alone in front of a mirror or answering an AI's fixed question list. If you already have access to someone who's interviewed candidates before — a senior colleague, a working professional in your target field, even a friend who's simply good at asking sharp questions — that's a resource worth using well.

The mistakes that waste everyone's time

  • No structure. "Just ask me some questions" leads to five minutes of small talk and one generic question. Give your interviewer a role and round to focus on beforehand.
  • No record of what happened. Verbal feedback right after a stressful conversation is forgettable — for both of you. Within a day, neither of you remembers exactly which answer was weak or why.
  • Too polite to be useful. Friends default to encouragement ("that was good!") instead of the specific, sometimes uncomfortable feedback a real interviewer would give internally but never say to your face.
  • Asking too much of someone's time. A 45-minute session plus 15 minutes of feedback is a real ask. People say yes once and are reluctant to do it again if it wasn't organised.

How to set one up properly

  1. Tell your interviewer the role and round in advance. "Software Engineer, technical round" gives them something to prepare questions around, instead of improvising.
  2. Agree on a time limit. 20–30 minutes is usually enough for a focused round. Open-ended sessions tend to either rush the end or overrun everyone's patience.
  3. Ask for the awkward questions too. Explicitly tell your interviewer you want at least one question that makes you uncomfortable — that's the one worth practising.
  4. Get feedback in writing, not just verbally. Ask them to note down one specific thing that worked and one that didn't, right after each answer if possible, not just a general summary at the end.

A structured way to do this: P2P Video Interview

This is exactly the gap Sanviora's P2P Video Interview feature is built for. You book a live video call, invite up to 3 people — a friend, a senior, a mentor — as interviewers, and set the duration upfront so nobody's time gets accidentally overrun. Everyone accepts a recording-consent screen before the call starts, and the moment it ends, you get an automatic AI-generated report: an overall score, strengths, specific weaknesses, and a next-steps plan — the same structured feedback you'd otherwise have to awkwardly ask a friend to reconstruct from memory. Your interviewer doesn't even need an account; they just open the invite link and join.

If you don't have anyone to ask

Not everyone has a senior or mentor on standby, and that's fine — start with Sanviora's AI Mock Interview instead. It's free to attempt, available instantly, and gives you the same kind of scored, structured feedback without needing to coordinate anyone's calendar. Many candidates use both: the AI interview to build comfort with the format, then a P2P Video Interview with a real person once they want the added pressure of a live conversation.