Interview drill 04Interview-style design round
Cutting an unemployment-insurance call backlog after a mass layoff
- 45 minutes
- Elective · Government
- No real companies
Hypothetical. No affiliation with or endorsement by the companies named. Public facts as of 6 October 2026; sources at the end of the brief.
The prompt
"You're the forward deployed engineer on an AI vendor's government team. A US state unemployment-insurance agency has just absorbed a mass layoff at a large regional employer. Initial claims have tripled, hold times on the claims line run to hours, and most callers want to know where their payment is or how to certify for the week. The director wants AI in the contact centre within six weeks. Counsel has drawn one line: no software decides eligibility, denies a claim or issues a determination. Merit staff do that. Walk me through how you would cut the backlog, what you'd build first, what you'd refuse to build, and how you'd show it's working without putting the agency's federal performance measures or claimants' hearing rights at risk."
The clock
- Clarify0–5 min
- Discovery plan5–15 min
- Design15–30 min
- Risks and evals30–40 min
- Rollout and the ask40–45 min
Lessons for this drill
Pro drill
The rest of this drill is in Pro.
What to know going in, the curveballs on the clock, a strong answer, the common mistakes and the rubric.
- Every stage and specialisation, in full
- Every lab and every role project
- Halden weeks 2–10, on your record
- Every drill, live in the playground
- All solutions, plus the server judge
- Lab Assistant and every Teach with AI