Practise the coffee chat
before you spend a real one.

No. The person across the table is an AI-generated fictional character, and the app tells you so up front. The character is firm-accurate - the right vocabulary for the division, a plausible career path, a realistic sense of the day-to-day - but it is never a real employee, never based on a specific person, and the firm itself is not involved in any way. That is exactly the point: you can fumble the small talk, mistime the ask, and restart the whole conversation without burning a real contact.

Yes, the way a real professional would. Before a real coffee chat most people skim your CV (resume) or LinkedIn for a couple of minutes, then bring it up in conversation. The character does the same: it has skimmed your CV before the call and may ask about it naturally - 'I saw you did a spring week at Barclays, how did you find the desk?' - without reciting it back at you. It makes the conversation feel like a real call with a real person who did their two minutes of homework.

Yes - it is one of the main reasons candidates use the simulator. Before the session you choose your ask: advice, a referral, or an introduction to someone else on the team. The skill you are practising is timing and framing. A referral ask that lands in minute two gets a polite brush-off; the same ask at an earned moment, after a conversation the professional actually enjoyed, gets a yes. 'The ask' is one of the four scored dimensions, so the debrief tells you honestly whether you earned it, timed it, and phrased it in a way they could say yes to.

After the call, Vyo scores the full conversation in the background on four dimensions: Rapport and presence (small talk, energy, listening), Question quality (researched and specific vs generic and Googleable), The ask (did you make one, was it earned, was it easy to say yes to), and Professionalism and close (respecting their time, a clean ending, clear next step). On top of the scores you get an honest verdict - would they vouch for you? - an annotated replay of the conversation with inline coaching notes, the chat-killers with fixes, and a follow-up email drafted from what was actually said.

Questions the person in front of you is uniquely placed to answer. Not 'what does an analyst do' (Googleable) but 'you moved from coverage to sponsors - what surprised you about the difference?' The simulator is built around exactly this: the character responds like a real professional, so lazy questions get short answers and researched questions open the conversation up. Question quality is one of the four scored dimensions, and the debrief flags every question you asked that the person could tell you had not earned.

Five personas: an Analyst or Associate (closest to your level, most common first chat), a VP or Director (busier, more evaluative), an MD or Partner (senior, time-poor, high stakes), an HR or campus recruiter (process-focused, notes everything), and an Alumni of your own university, anchored to what is on your CV. You also set the character's mood - warm, professional, or busy - which works as the difficulty dial. Warm gives you room; busy gives you a distracted professional with eight minutes and no patience for a rambling intro.

Sessions run 10, 15 or 20 minutes - the real range for these calls. And yes, both markets. In US finance recruiting, coffee chats and referrals are the standard path to a summer analyst seat, so the simulator mirrors that playbook directly. In the UK the same conversation happens around spring weeks, insight days and application referrals, usually as a 15-minute phone call rather than an actual coffee. Pick the firm and the context follows.

Coffee chat sessions are live voice sessions, so they are metered like live AI interviews rather than unlimited. They are available on paid Intervyo plans (Monthly, Season Pass and firm Packs); the current allowance for each plan is shown on the pricing page and at signup. Every session, on every plan, includes the full Vyo debrief: four-dimension scores, the annotated replay, and the drafted follow-up email.