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How to prepare for the micro1 and Mercor AI interviews

Before you apply Updated 13 Oct 2026

Every open micro1 and Mercor role on this site, 253 and 223 of them this morning, starts with one AI interview. Nobody on either platform talks to you before it.

This site is not affiliated with micro1 or Mercor, and passing the interview is not a promise of work.

The short answer

Both interviews are a spoken conversation with an AI, on camera, in your browser. The questions come from your resume and from what you say in the first two minutes. Mercor’s runs about 20 minutes. micro1’s runs 20 to 40, or less if it has already tested some of your skills. Both are scored from the transcript of your answers, and then a person decides whether you get a project.

Mercor lets you retake the interview up to three times and never tells you how you did. micro1 gives you a result at once, lets you ask for written feedback if you did not pass, and does not let you retake that role.

The two interviews side by side

Each cell links to the platform’s own page. Where the platform says nothing, the cell says so rather than guess.

	Mercor	micro1
Length	About 20 minutes, some shorter or longer	20 to 40 minutes; roughly 7 minutes per skill tested
Format	Spoken answers, camera and microphone on, face visible. No avatar	Spoken conversation with a video avatar called Zara; coding tasks for technical roles, data exercises for annotation roles
Where questions come from	Your resume and the job description	Your introduction and the skills you selected; no two candidates get the same questions
Browser	Chrome recommended; Edge and Safari supported; Firefox and phones not supported	Not stated on its site. Staff on its community forum say latest Chrome or Safari
Free practice run	Yes, unlimited, never shown to companies	Yes, a mock interview per role, about 18 minutes, does not count
Retakes	Up to three, pooled across every application that uses that interview; only the latest attempt is evaluated	None. A submitted or timed-out interview cannot be reset; a fresh interview when the role reopens or via another role needing the same skill. A missed window auto-extends 48 hours while the role is open
Result	Never shown. No score, no feedback, by policy	Shown at once: certified or “did not qualify”
Feedback	None	On request from the dashboard when you did not qualify
Reuse	Completed steps carry over to later applications and never expire	Skills passed in the last year are skipped in later interviews
Language	English unless the role says otherwise	Not stated
Using an AI tool for answers	Prohibited beyond grammar and light phrasing; clearly AI-written answers are flagged	No policy published

What is actually scored

Mercor’s data policy says the system generates questions from your resume and the job, transcribes your answers and evaluates them. micro1’s published description of Zara has a language model read the transcript and write two or three strengths and two or three areas to improve. What you say is what is scored. The camera matters because the interview is recorded, not because a model is reading your face.

What you say first decides the rest. Both interviewers build every follow-up from your introduction and your resume. Mention a tool and you will be asked about it. Lead with the thing you can go deepest on, and leave out anything you would rather not be tested on. On Mercor that starts with the resume you upload, because the questions are generated from it.

Silence ends an answer. micro1 says a long pause is read as finished. People who have sat Mercor’s describe the same: stop talking and it moves to the next question or asks a harder one. If you need a moment, say so out loud, then think.

Questions come bundled. One question often carries two or three parts. Answer each part in order and say which part you are on. A broad answer to a compound question reads as though you missed some of it.

Before: a 30-minute checklist

Pick the one role you can go deepest on. Applying inside your real specialism is the biggest single factor in clearing the screen. On micro1, later interviews get shorter as skills are vetted, so start with your strongest.
On Mercor, trim the resume to what you want tested. A padded resume produces an interview about the padding. Plain single column, exact tool names, one number per role.
Prepare three stories. Each one: the situation, what you decided, what happened, and a number. Every follow-up will draw on these.
Write a two-sentence introduction naming your field, your years, the roles you have held and one specialism. Say it aloud until it is under 30 seconds.
Do the free practice run first. It is the same interface as the real thing, and micro1 confirms the mock result does not count.
Check the browser. Mercor: latest Chrome. micro1: latest Chrome or Safari. Not a phone on either.
Wired connection if you can, headphones and an external microphone. Mercor recommends both; micro1’s own troubleshooting list starts with the router.
Close everything else. Other video calls, downloads and streams on the same connection are the most common cause of the interview stalling.
Pen, paper and a calculator to hand. Mercor lists all three.
Turn on your browser’s live captions. One micro1 exercise asks you to rewrite a spoken paragraph, and captions let you read it back.

Check your setup

The browser can test three of those. The rest are ticks you can keep until interview day.

During: how to answer

Use one shape for every answer: the situation, the decision you made, what happened, the number.

A generalist, asked how they handle unclear instructions: “On a labelling project last year the guidelines contradicted each other on one edge case. I wrote up both readings with an example each, chose the one that matched the project’s stated goal, and flagged it in the task notes. The lead adopted my reading, and my rework rate on that batch was under two percent.”

A specialist, asked about a production problem: “A reporting pipeline I owned started missing its window. I traced it to a join that had grown quadratic as one table doubled, rewrote it as a pre-aggregated step, and added an alert on run time. The job went from four hours to twenty minutes and has not missed since.”

Say “I”, not “we”. These are independent contracts with no team around you, and the interviewer is listening for the decision you made. Name only tools you can defend for three follow-ups. If you missed a question, ask for it again. If it is ambiguous, ask what it means; that also buys thinking time.

Do not read answers written by an AI tool during the call. Mercor’s policy prohibits it and says clearly AI-written answers are flagged, and the follow-ups will expose it anyway.

If it breaks

micro1. Freezing after the introduction, repeated questions and a “Reconnecting” screen are the most reported problem, and micro1 staff have acknowledged it. Their list: restart the router, use a wired connection, stop anything else using the network, try another time of day, retry the link in Chrome incognito or Firefox private mode. If it still fails, email support with the role name. The interview cannot be resumed from where it stopped.

Mercor. If the connection drops, Mercor says to reopen the Assessments tab and try again. If the session has already closed, the only route is a retake, which uses one of your three attempts. Ending the interview yourself also costs an attempt: Mercor marks one that stops well short as “Interview too short”, and the retake it asks for comes out of your three. If all three are gone, Mercor says you can email support to ask for another, but only for technical problems and with no guarantee.

Retakes

Mercor. Its support page says you can retake an interview up to three times across all the applications that use it. Three per interview type, not three per job, and only your most recent attempt counts. Hiring managers can see how many times you retook it, and a retake resets your application progress, so Mercor asks you to keep retakes for technical problems. The button is in the Assessments tab: Retake assessment on the interview card, then a reason, then Retake interview. If it is missing, email support with the interview name. Before you retake, change what you lead with. A retake straight after a bad run tends to repeat it.

micro1. There is no retake. micro1 says an interview you submitted, or one that ran out of time, cannot be reset, and that this is to keep the process fair across candidates. You get a new interview when that role reopens for another project, or by applying to a different role that needs the same skill. Since August 2026 Zara skips any skill you passed in the previous year, so a second interview for a related role can be ten minutes.

Missing the window is the one case that is not final. micro1 says that if you do not sit the interview in time, you are granted a further 48 hours automatically, for as long as the role is still open. Nothing to request: the extension applies on its own, and the role closing is what ends it.

After

Both platforms move you into a pool that a person reviews, and the wait there is the hard part. micro1 says a recruiter check takes up to 72 hours and the hiring pool up to 30 days. Mercor publishes no timeline. A pass on either is a seat in the pool, not a project. The stages and status names are on what happens after you apply.

A Mercor interview ending a few minutes early is not a bad sign; a Mercor staffer has said it means the interview collected what it needed. On micro1, a “did not qualify” result comes with the option to request written feedback, which most people never use.

What neither platform states

None of the following appears on a micro1 or Mercor page, so this site does not claim them:

a numeric score, or how it is weighted
any monitoring of eye movement, tab switching or other windows
a waiting period before you can apply again on micro1
whether the client sees your recording
how long a Mercor decision takes after the interview
whether the retake count on Mercor ever resets

A guide that gives you a figure for one of these has no source for it.

Questions people ask

Can I pause the interview?

No, on either platform. Both run in one sitting. Say “give me a moment” rather than going quiet, because silence is read as the end of your answer.

Can I look at the question text instead of the camera?

Yes. Zara’s questions appear as text while she speaks, and micro1 community staff have said reading them is not treated as cheating. Mercor requires your face to stay visible but does not say where to look.

Does one interview cover more than one role?

On Mercor, yes: completed steps carry over to every later application that needs them and do not expire. On micro1, each application has its own interview, but skills you have already passed are skipped.

How do I know if I passed?

micro1 tells you at once and shows the status on your dashboard. Mercor does not tell you; the next thing you hear is an offer, a rejection, or nothing. An email from Mercor saying your profile qualifies for instant offers is not a rejection.

I failed. What now?

On micro1, request the feedback from the dashboard and apply to a neighbouring role that needs the same skill. On Mercor, change your resume and your opening before using a retake. On both, a first interview that went badly is common among people who were later hired.

Roles that screen this way

All micro1 roles and Mercor roles on this site use the interview described here. Pick the one closest to your own field from the open micro1 and Mercor roles, since that is where the interview goes best. The Zara guide goes deeper on micro1’s format, and the Mercor guide covers its assessments and pay.