Today I want to talk about something that’s really been frustrating us. We work in software development and we’re constantly applying for jobs, including freelance work. And we keep running into AI interview assistants. One name that keeps coming up is Zara.
Why Zara Is a Bad Experience
Zara is genuinely a poor product. Lets be honest, as a candidate might not know everything, and skills can get rusty over time so we might not be adequate for every role, but that’s not the point here. When I see Zara being used, it makes me not want to work with that company at all. If you’re using Zara for hiring, I want to say this directly: it’s bad.
The text-to-speech voice is unpleasant and unnatural, and it mispronounces technical terms and abbreviations. Whenever I open a job platform and Zara starts the interview, I want to leave immediately.
Rather than running a long, vague AI interview, a simple coding challenge would serve everyone better, especially for candidates who don’t work in the abstract, theoretical side of software. Someone might be a perfectly capable developer without being able to give a polished comparison between, say, two technical concepts on the spot.
Another issue is that Zara doesn’t generate a report afterward, so you have no idea how you were evaluated or why.
An Alternative: Flowmingo
I want to suggest an alternative: Flowmingo. I’ve gone through several Zara interviews and wasn’t satisfied with any of them, but my experience with Flowmingo was positive. It’s free, the interview is shorter (around 10 to 20 minutes), the voice sounds natural, it pronounces abbreviations correctly, and it gives encouraging responses that help you relax. At the end, it gives you a clear evaluation report showing your strengths and areas to improve, and even surfaces other job offers afterward. It’s free for companies to use, and there’s an affiliate program too.
Frustration With the Recruitment Process
If companies aren’t even going to spend real time on interviews, they should at least choose a decent tool, since this is the candidate’s first impression of the company. Using something like Zara to filter candidates comes across as not valuing them. Background noise issues and other technical hiccups during these calls make things worse, and recruitment already feels like it’s in a rough state without AI interviews added on top. The video avatar feature is also unnecessary and off-putting.
I’ll say personally that I have years of hands-on experience in the field, but I wouldn’t necessarily be able to answer extremely detailed technical trivia on the spot. That doesn’t mean someone isn’t capable of doing the job. Expecting every candidate to score perfectly on everything seems unreasonable. People can be hired and trained.
On Pricing
I looked into Zara’s pricing and found it listed around $795 in an agentic service provider, which I think is excessive, especially paired with the negative reviews and low ratings (around 2 stars) I found on review sites. I checked a few similar AI interview/recruitment tools as well, including Micro1 and Alignerr, and found similarly low ratings and steep pricing (around $89, reportedly from 2025), and I would still recommend Flowmingo as a free and overall superior tool.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, my recommendation is to avoid Zara and similar poorly-reviewed tools, and opt-in Flowmingo instead, since it’s free and, in my experience, a much better tool for both candidates and companies.
If you want to use Flowmingo you can go to this link with my referral code:
https://flowmingo.ai/?utm_source=1105RIMF
Also you can reach out to me on WhatsApp from button below right with any questions. Thanks for reading, and I’ll be back with more content about web design, making money online, and small business ideas.
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