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    <title>DEV Community: Rain</title>
    <description>The latest articles on DEV Community by Rain (@rain_58f06f96bd7e75fc15ee).</description>
    <link>https://dev.to/rain_58f06f96bd7e75fc15ee</link>
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      <title>DEV Community: Rain</title>
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      <title>I got tired of running technical interviews from a Google Sheet, so I built an AI-powered helper</title>
      <dc:creator>Rain</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 14:52:52 +0000</pubDate>
      <link>https://dev.to/rain_58f06f96bd7e75fc15ee/i-got-tired-of-running-technical-interviews-from-a-google-sheet-so-i-built-an-ai-powered-helper-5eda</link>
      <guid>https://dev.to/rain_58f06f96bd7e75fc15ee/i-got-tired-of-running-technical-interviews-from-a-google-sheet-so-i-built-an-ai-powered-helper-5eda</guid>
      <description>&lt;p&gt;About a year ago I started actively participating in technical interviews at my company as an interviewer. I'm a DevOps engineer, not an HR person — so I had zero process going in.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And honestly? Neither did anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Not my teammates. Not even my manager — he was literally googling "top DevOps interview questions" right before calls. I did the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The Google Sheet phase
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I cobbled together a checklist from colleagues and random "top interview questions" sites, dumped it into a Google Sheet, and called it a system. Rows for questions, columns for scores, and a notes cell at the end where I was supposed to write some comment about how the candidate did.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The idea was fine. The execution was painful.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Here's the thing — during a technical interview you're already doing a lot:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Listening carefully to what the candidate says&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Thinking about follow-up questions on the fly&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Evaluating their answer in real time&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Keeping track of time&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And on top of all that I was supposed to type structured notes into a spreadsheet? Half the time I'd finish the call and have three words written down.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Then my company started asking for &lt;strong&gt;written feedback reports&lt;/strong&gt; after each interview. A proper structured writeup per candidate.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  The thing that finally pushed me over the edge
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Candidates started showing up using AI assistants to help them answer questions in real time. And interviewers — myself included — were still juggling Google Sheets and personal notes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;That asymmetry felt absurd. After 3-4 interviews I just thought: this is dumb, I can fix this.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  What I built
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I opened up my editor and started building &lt;strong&gt;Interview Helper&lt;/strong&gt; — a smart organizer for people who conduct technical interviews regularly.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The core features:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question Bank&lt;/strong&gt; — ready-made question templates organized by role (DevOps, Backend, Frontend, Data Science, HR, System Design) and level (Junior / Middle / Senior). No more googling. Just open the bank, pick a template, copy it into your session.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Templates&lt;/strong&gt; — save your own custom question sets and reuse them across interviews. If you have a go-to set for DevOps Middles, you create it once and it's always there.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sessions&lt;/strong&gt; — each candidate gets their own session with their name, role, date, and status. No more mixing up "the DevOps guy from Tuesday" with "the other DevOps guy from Thursday."&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AI assistant&lt;/strong&gt; — helps analyze candidate answers during or after the interview, and assists with writing the feedback report afterward.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Honest disclaimer
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I'm a DevOps engineer, not a fullstack developer. This is a genuine side project built out of frustration with my own workflow. It's not polished to perfection — but it already makes my interviews noticeably less chaotic.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h2&gt;
  
  
  Would love your thoughts
&lt;/h2&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Do other people who conduct interviews regularly feel this pain? Is your process actually better than mine was, or are you also secretly running on Google Sheets and vibes?&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;And if this sounds useful — I'd love to hear what features would actually matter to you. Happy to share more details or a demo in the comments.&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F79lqsaua08o6ylp2fwmx.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2F79lqsaua08o6ylp2fwmx.png" alt=" " width="800" height="498"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;
&lt;a href="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fg73f5os4dimf3r9k6c10.png" class="article-body-image-wrapper"&gt;&lt;img src="https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=800%2Cheight=%2Cfit=scale-down%2Cgravity=auto%2Cformat=auto/https%3A%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Farticles%2Fg73f5os4dimf3r9k6c10.png" alt=" " width="800" height="495"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

</description>
      <category>ai</category>
      <category>devops</category>
      <category>programming</category>
      <category>interview</category>
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