AIVIA evaluates how you reason through realistic technical problems in your chosen domain. Not what you can memorize, not what your resume claims — how you actually think when faced with a specific situation.
01 The Structure of an Evaluation
An evaluation has 3 main questions by default (some evaluations may have up to 5), each with 2 follow-ups. You write your answer to each question in text. You have up to 10 minutes per answer. The follow-ups adapt based on what you said — AIVIA probes the specific reasoning in your response, not a generic next question from a script.
After every answer, the evaluator runs and you receive feedback immediately. You learn where your reasoning was strong and where it fell short as the evaluation progresses, not just at the end.
At the end of the main questions and their follow-ups, there’s a brief audio reflection — a few minutes where you speak about whatever feels most relevant to you. This is the only spoken part of the evaluation.
02 What AIVIA Does Not Do
It does not ask you to recall framework syntax, library APIs, or trivia. It does not give you the scenario in advance — you walk in knowing the question count and the expected background, and the scenario unfolds as the evaluation runs. It does not penalize unusual approaches; it evaluates the reasoning behind them.
03 How You’re Scored
Answers are scored out of 5 on rubric dimensions — some fixed, some component-specific. Your overall rating comes back as Beginner, Intermediate, or Proficient.
AIVIA rewards trajectory. A candidate who starts uncertain but finishes strong under deep probing scores better than one who stays flat on initial answers. If AIVIA’s feedback hints at something and you simply repeat it back, that dimension caps at 3/5 — leading the discovery yourself is what earns a 4 or 5.
For full details on dimensions, scoring scale, and grade thresholds, see the Rubric & Scoring post.
04 What Good Answers Look Like
Scoring is on substance, not format. Some candidates write in bullets. Some write in short paragraphs. Some write longer and more essayistic. All are fine. What matters is whether your answer demonstrates clear reasoning about the specific situation — not whether it looks a particular way.
Commit to answers. Each main answer counts. Spending a full slot on “I’d need more information” leaves you one fewer answer to show what you can do. If you genuinely need a clarifying assumption to proceed, state the assumption and reason from it. Then keep going.
05 How to Prepare
Every AIVIA evaluation is anchored to a post in the domain. That post is a case study — a scenario with commentary, different from the one you’ll face in the evaluation but close enough to be instructive.
Spending time with the case study before you start helps you calibrate to the depth and kind of reasoning the evaluation is looking for. You can’t memorize answers this way, because the evaluation scenario is different. But you can show up ready to think at the right level.