Education · Adaptive interview training platform
HirePrep: adaptive investment banking interview training
HirePrep Inc. prepares candidates for investment banking interviews. We built an adaptive platform that starts with a diagnostic, drops topics a candidate already knows and runs branching mock interviews. Candidates who complete the programme get offers at 3.1x the rate of self-study controls, technical accuracy rises from 54% to 88%, and study time falls 40%. We built it in 8 weeks.
- Client
- HirePrep Inc.
- Industry
- Education
- Built
- Web app
- Timeframe
- 8 weeks
What changed
- 3.1x offer rateFor candidates completing the full programme, compared with self-study controls.
- 18,000 candidatesThrough the platform in two recruiting cycles.
- 40% less study timeFor the same readiness, by skipping topics a candidate has already mastered.
- 240,000 mock sessionsMock interview sessions completed.
- 54% to 88% accuracyAverage technical accuracy across a programme.
- 8 weeksTime to build.
Results as reported for this build after launch.
The challenge
Investment banking candidates had no training that adjusted to how they were performing. They leaned on static study material that could not recreate real interview conditions or point them to their weak spots.
Investment banking recruiting rests on a small, well-known set of technical questions and a much less understood set of behavioural expectations. The guides every candidate buys cover the technical side and do little for the behavioural one.
The bigger issue is that static material cannot tell a candidate where they are weak. They read a four hundred page guide cover to cover, spend as much time on accounting they already know as on LBO modelling they do not, and arrive at a superday without having practised anything under pressure.
The founder had recruited for a bank and then coached candidates one to one. The coaching worked because it adapted: find the weak area in twenty minutes and spend the rest of the session on it. That approach does not scale as one-to-one coaching, and scaling it is what the client asked us to do.
What we built
We built an adaptive learning platform where progress is driven by performance. Candidates work on their weak areas, measure their readiness and build confidence through realistic, structured mock interviews.
Diagnostic assessment
A diagnostic across accounting, valuation, modelling, markets and behavioural questions sets each candidate's baseline and drives everything after it.
Adaptive learning path
Topics a candidate has shown they know are dropped, weak areas expand into more practice, and difficulty rises with performance instead of following a fixed order.
Branching mock interviews
Mock interviews are timed and pressured, and follow-up questions branch on the answer given, because follow-ups are where real interviews separate candidates.
Two-part scoring
Each response is scored separately on technical accuracy and on structure and delivery.
Browser modelling tests and bank-specific questions
A modelling test environment runs in the browser, and a question library reflects how individual banks differ.
Spaced repetition and readiness score
Weak concepts come back on a spaced repetition schedule, and a readiness score is benchmarked against candidates who received offers.
Screens and design system
The result
For candidates, the result that counts is studying 40% less while getting more accurate, and it comes entirely from not re-teaching what they already know.
Several university finance societies now use the platform as their standard preparation. That moved customer acquisition from individual sales to institutional deals, which was not the original commercial plan.
