Some conversations give you one shot: the job interview, the raise, the pitch. Sandeep Swadia’s fix is to rehearse them with an agent that plays the other person, out loud, before the day arrives. The first time you say the thing that matters most should not be in the room where it counts.
01Say it out loud first
Interview nerves are close to universal. Swadia cites a survey by JDP in which 93 percent of people said they get anxious about job interviews, and the same survey’s useful finding: practicing the interview out loud is one of the best ways to bring that anxiety down.
Out loud is the part most preparation skips. Notes and written answers polish what you plan to say; they do nothing for the live experience of being asked, pausing, and answering while someone waits. A rehearsal agent gives you that experience on demand, as many times as you want, with nobody watching. The stakes stay at zero until the day they are real.
02Load the context, cast the role
The rehearsal is only as real as what the agent knows, so the setup starts with the real materials: the company background, the job description, your resume, your cover letter, anything you would want an actual interviewer to have read. Brief the model like a brilliant new hire is the general form of this rule; here the new hire is playing your interviewer.
Then you cast the role. Swadia’s brief: you are the hiring manager for a senior product role, you are sharp, you are a little skeptical, and you have read my resume. Go ahead and interview me. The brief also sets the rules of play:
- One question at a time, so it feels like a conversation instead of a questionnaire.
- Push back on weak answers the way a real interviewer would, instead of accepting everything politely.
- Keep a record of the whole session, so there is something concrete to review when it ends.
03Talk, then break character
“don't type it. Talk to it. Turn on the voice mode”
Sandeep Swadia, “4 AI Agents To Automate 99% Of Your Life” · 17:11Voice is what carries the practice into the real room. The major chat apps, Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, all hold a spoken conversation on your phone: you can be interrupted, ask clarifying questions, and hear yourself hesitate. Swadia runs his rehearsals on walks.
When the session ends, the agent changes jobs. Tell it: we are done with the interview, now you are my interview coach. Then ask for the specifics a polite human would soften:
- Where was I weak, and where did I ramble?
- What should I have said?
- Give me three better ways to answer the hardest question.
The record it kept during the session is what makes this review concrete instead of general encouragement.
04Raise the stakes, keep the card
Once the friendly round goes well, make the next one harder. Give the agent a tougher persona: the startup’s CEO conducting your final round, interviewing you for forty-five minutes and then giving you fifteen to ask your own questions, because that part will happen in real life too. The technique scales as far as the stakes do.
“I know CEOs who rehearse their entire board meeting with six or seven agents”
Sandeep Swadia, “4 AI Agents To Automate 99% Of Your Life” · 16:07Each of those agents is cast as one board member. Yours can be cast as anyone whose questions you fear.
When the reps are done, ask for one last output: a one-page prep card of what you learned, to read before the real conversation. The point of the card, and of every round before it, is capacity: the ability to give a good answer to whatever gets asked, the way a musician rehearses to be able to improvise on stage. A script breaks the first time a question you never practiced arrives; the capacity survives.
Further reading
- Sandeep Swadia · 4 AI Agents To Automate 99% Of Your Life, the walkthrough this guide draws on
- Claude · Use voice mode, turning on spoken conversations in the mobile app