The tools you'll work in

Works like ServiceNow or Jira Service Management. For security, it, support.

Triage a morning's tickets: priority, owner, and what to escalate.

Works like Wireshark. For security, networking.

Open a capture and find the machine that's phoning home.

Works like Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel or Elastic Security. For soc analyst (tier 1), security analyst, detection engineer (junior), incident responder, it security associate.

Work a SOC shift: close an impossible travel alert as a false positive, find a password spray's source with a distinct count in a time bin, scope a phish to who clicked and which hosts ran it, write a spray rule that stays quiet on a normal Monday, and write the incident summary.

Works like any Linux server. For security, engineering, it.

Work out an overnight break-in from raw logs with real commands.

Works like SIG Lite or the CSA CAIQ, with a risk register. For grc, compliance, procurement.

Judge a vendor's answers against their evidence and make the call.

Works like the access reviews in Okta or Microsoft Entra. For grc, iam, it.

Find who still has access they shouldn't, and prove it.

Works like Microsoft Intune, Jamf or Kandji. For it support specialist, desktop support technician, help desk analyst, endpoint administrator (junior), it asset coordinator.

Run a made-up company's IT desk on a Monday: find why each device fails compliance and assign the missing encryption profile, build a dynamic Finance Macs group for the finance app, lock and wipe a lost laptop and retire a leaver's phone, set update rings and OS exceptions, and reclaim stale license seats.

Works like the AWS, Azure or Google Cloud consoles. For cloud engineering, devops, security, it.

Close a security audit's findings in a cloud account: a public bucket, SSH open to the internet, a departed engineer's key and an intern with too much access, without breaking the app.

Works like Tableau or Power BI. For data analysis, business analysis, operations, marketing analytics.

Build a one-page dashboard for a weekly review: filter the period, chart the numbers and answer the director's questions.

Works like Jupyter. For data analyst, business analyst, operations analyst, marketing analyst, junior data scientist.

Answer a manager's questions about a made-up company's data in Python: load the tables, leave the refunds out, group and add up, and store each answer where the notebook can check it.

Works like a database query tool, with PostgreSQL rules. For data, product, engineering.

Answer six questions from the head of analytics with joins, groups, windows and CTEs.

Works like Postman or Insomnia. For backend engineering, qa, support engineering, solutions engineering.

Reproduce a bug support filed against an orders API, write the test that would have caught it, and work Staging and Production safely.

Works like VS Code, with a test runner. For software engineering, qa.

Fix a real bug without breaking anything, then add the test that would have caught it.

Works like Git, with a commit graph like GitHub Desktop or GitKraken. For software engineering, data engineering, qa, every developer.

Your first week on a team repo: pull, branch, commit only the fix, merge a teammate's conflicting change, take a leaked key back out and push your branch.

Works like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or Jenkins. For devops engineer (junior), site reliability engineer (junior), build and release engineer, platform engineer, software engineer.

Get a made-up team's pipeline release-ready: fix tests that start before install, pull a printed secret and a pasted token out, test both supported versions with a lockfile cache key, gate deploys to main with a reviewer, and require the tests on main.

Works like dbt, Airflow or Fivetran. For data engineer (junior), analytics engineer, data analyst, bi developer, data platform associate.

Clean up a made-up shop's warehouse after a bad load: rerun the failed DAG from the stale source, dedupe customers in staging so orders stop fanning out, make the events model incremental with the right key and lookback, add the contract's tests and give finance the corrected revenue to the cent.

Works like GitHub pull requests. For software engineering, qa.

Review a teammate's pull request: find the real problems among the tidy-ups, comment on the lines, and make the call.

Works like Lucidchart or draw.io. For engineering, product, consulting.

Diagram how a feature really works, from the request to the database.

Works like a whiteboard that runs your code. For software engineering, data.

Predict what an algorithm will do, then watch it run step by step.

Works like MATLAB or a Jupyter notebook. For aerospace, mechanical, test engineering.

Predict a test rocket's burnout speed and apogee from its motor data, with and without drag, then check a drone's lift.

Works like MATLAB or a Jupyter notebook. For mechanical, civil, structural.

Check a workshop gantry beam under a hoist: reactions, bending moment, stress, safety factor and deflection.

Works like MATLAB or a Jupyter notebook. For electrical, hardware, embedded.

Time a power-on reset circuit, then pick a status LED's resistor and its power rating from stock parts.

Works like the sketch mode in SolidWorks, Fusion or Onshape. For mechanical engineering, product design engineering, manufacturing.

Draw a mounting bracket plate to the lead's marked-up print: clear an over-defined sketch, drive it with dimensions, use equal and symmetric, and fully define it.

Works like ArcGIS Pro or QGIS. For gis technician, gis analyst, planning technician, environmental technician, utility mapping technician.

Work a town planning office's week in its GIS: buffer a proposed cell tower for the notice mailing list, list the vacant parcels that intersect the flood zone, fix a hydrant date and a stale area with the field calculator, find the school farthest from a hydrant on a main, and lay out the council zoning map.

Works like Jira or Linear. For product, engineering, project management.

Plan a sprint against a quarterly goal and the team's real capacity.

Works like Microsoft Project or Smartsheet. For project coordination, construction coordination, operations, program management.

Get a new store's opening schedule right: enter the PM's missing links, find the critical path, work a vendor delay through to the opening date and level a double-booked designer inside her slack.

Works like Figma or Sketch. For product design, ux, marketing design, product management.

Give a product manager's rough mobile screen a design pass: contrast, one primary button, tap targets, library styles, spacing and alignment.

Works like Notion or Google Docs. For product management, operations, program coordination, every role that writes.

Turn an interview, a ticket count, a team thread that disagrees with itself and a metric into a one-page spec your lead can plan from.

Works like the ad managers and web analytics tools marketers use. For marketing, growth, e-commerce.

Find where a campaign is wasting money, follow the funnel and move the budget to what works.

Works like Mailchimp or Klaviyo. For marketing, lifecycle, growth.

Fix a teammate's win-back campaign, A/B test the subject line and call the winner honestly.

Works like Google Analytics, Search Console or Adobe Analytics. For marketing analyst, digital marketing coordinator, seo specialist, growth associate, ecommerce analyst.

Write an online store's Monday readout: find the funnel step that broke and where, report the true conversion rate without office and bot traffic, fix a mis-tagged email send and build the next link, pick the right fix for two search pages and count the newsletter sign-up as a conversion.

Works like Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social. For social media coordinator, marketing associate, community manager.

Schedule a launch week's posts at the times the analytics show, fit each to its network's limits with alt text and tagged links, and work the engagement inbox without arguing with a customer.

Works like Salesforce or HubSpot. For sales, account management, customer success.

Clean up an inherited pipeline: stages that don't match the evidence, stale dates, no next steps, and an honest forecast.

Works like Zendesk or Intercom. For customer support, customer success, operations.

Work a morning's support queue: set priorities, find answers in the help center, escalate what isn't yours and write replies that keep the customer.

Works like Workday, ADP or Gusto. For payroll coordinator, payroll specialist, payroll and benefits assistant, hr coordinator, accounting assistant.

Run a biweekly payroll before the pay date: fix a missing day and a timesheet that doesn't match its approval, work the held checks from gross to net with overtime by workweek and a mid-period raise, catch the error on the register and approve the run.

Works like QuickBooks or Xero. For accounting, finance, bookkeeping.

Close the month: categorize the bank feed, reconcile to zero, book accruals and read the statements.

Works like Fiserv, Jack Henry or nCino. For bank teller, personal banker, collections specialist, loan servicing associate, fraud and kyc analyst, accounts receivable.

Work a community bank's back office: review new accounts and clear a watchlist hit, work a collections list inside the calling rules, route a card claim, quote a loan payoff to the cent and hold a large deposit.

Works like Drake, ProSeries or UltraTax. For tax preparer, seasonal tax associate, staff accountant (tax), bookkeeper.

Work a tax office's day: key a client's documents over a mistyped organizer, call standard or itemized on a close one, do a freelancer's business income and self-employment tax, claim the care credit for the right child and clear every diagnostic.

Works like Guidewire ClaimCenter, Duck Creek or Majesco. For claims adjuster (trainee), claims representative, claims processor, insurance customer service representative, underwriting assistant.

Work a made-up carrier's claims desk: verify coverage on three new losses and catch the one a day past cancellation, set exposures and reserves, pay a homeowners claim with depreciation and the ALE limit, refer the one theft with real fraud indicators to SIU, then send the denial and diary the open claims.

Works like AuditBoard, TeamMate+ or CaseWare. For internal audit associate, staff auditor, sox analyst, audit assistant, compliance analyst.

Test a made-up company's purchase-to-pay controls for the quarter: size and draw three samples with the seeded tool, catch the missing receipt and the approval over its limit but not the price inside tolerance, flag the bank change with no callback, conclude against the tolerable count, log issues with severity and root cause, and clear the reviewer's notes.

Works like Excel or Google Sheets. For every role: data, finance, operations, product.

Answer a manager's questions from a quarter of orders: lookups, refunds by region, a chart and a pivot.

Works like Excel, the way finance teams model. For financial analyst, fp&a, investment banking analyst, corporate finance, consulting.

Fix a three-year operating model before Friday: three planted errors, a linked P&L, a scenario switch, then downside EBITDA and the NPV.

Works like SAP or Oracle NetSuite. For supply chain, procurement, operations, inventory.

Work a buyer's morning: raise POs from the reorder report, receive a damaged delivery, block a mismatched invoice and route a requisition for approval.

Works like Procore or Autodesk Build. For assistant project manager, project engineer, field engineer, construction coordinator, site superintendent assistant.

Run a project engineer's week on a new building: pin a door that hits a beam and send the RFI, catch a late submittal on the critical path, log a weather delay, price a change order and assign the punch list.

Works like MasterControl, ETQ or Minitab. For quality technician, quality inspector, qa associate, manufacturing quality engineer.

Run a plant's quality desk: inspect incoming lots to the sampling plan and catch the gauge past calibration, find the run rule on a control chart and work out Cpk, open the NCR, write a CAPA to the real root cause and find the station on an old SOP revision.

Works like Intelex, VelocityEHS or SafetyCulture. For ehs coordinator, safety specialist, environmental health and safety technician, safety assistant, plant safety coordinator.

Close the month on a plant's safety desk: classify five injury reports and log only the recordables, work out TRIR and DART, give every walkthrough finding a corrective action and flag the blocked fire exit, catch the oxidizer beside the flammables and the stale SDS, and pull expiring forklift cards off the schedule.

Works like Manhattan, Blue Yonder or Fishbowl. For warehouse associate, inventory clerk, shipping and receiving clerk, logistics coordinator, distribution supervisor.

Run a distribution center's shift: receive an ASN with an overage and a crushed pallet, put pallets away by zone, weight and capacity, release a wave for the 3 PM pickup with FEFO lots, cartonize and rate shop three orders, and replenish the pick faces before they run dry.

Works like Samsara, Motive or McLeod. For dispatcher, logistics coordinator, fleet coordinator, transportation planner, freight broker assistant.

Run a made-up carrier's morning: cover four loads legally under hours of service, re-plan a broken-down truck and update the customer, bill detention, hold a truck for PM, and get a driver home.

Works like SAP IBP, Oracle Supply Planning or NetSuite. For supply chain analyst, material planner, demand planner, production planner, inventory analyst, buyer-planner.

Run a made-up manufacturer's weekly planning run: clean a one-time order out of the forecast, run MRP by hand, expedite and de-expedite orders, level an overloaded cell, and send the buyer the next two weeks of POs.

Works like Yardi, AppFolio or Buildium. For leasing agent, leasing consultant, assistant property manager, property administrator, resident services coordinator.

Run an apartment community's week: screen three applications on the written criteria, lease the ready unit with proration and the special, post the payment batch and late fees to the cap, triage maintenance by the emergency definition, then send a move-out deposit statement on time and price a renewal.

Works like Shopify, BigCommerce or WooCommerce. For e-commerce coordinator, online store associate, merchandising assistant, customer service associate (e-commerce), marketplace specialist.

Run an online store's Monday before a sale: set up the weekend discount on the right collection and clock, fix the tag its rule misses, move stock off a closed location and hold the order that oversold, partially fulfill and refund a line to the cent, fix a backwards compare-at price and answer the customer, and add a shipping zone with inclusive weight breaks.

Works like Greenhouse or Lever. For recruiting, hr, people operations.

Screen a stack of applicants fairly against the job's must-haves and brief the hiring manager.

Works like Workday or BambooHR. For hr operations, people operations, hr coordinator, payroll.

Work an HR coordinator's Monday: enter a new hire, review a promotion and a time off request, start a termination and keep pay confidential.

Works like Cornerstone, Docebo or Workday Learning. For training coordinator, learning and development coordinator, hr coordinator (training), instructional design assistant, onboarding specialist.

Run a made-up warehouse company's training desk before a safety audit: build the onboarding path and its rule without the transfer, assign and remind only the truly overdue, re-assign after a new version, seat a forklift class with a waitlist, and send the auditor a compliance report.

Works like Epic or Cerner. For medical office administration, patient access, medical billing, clinic coordination.

Work a clinic's front desk: book a new patient, check in the right record, update coverage, hold a visit that needs a referral and decline a caller who isn't authorized.

Works like Epic, athenaOne or Kareo. For medical biller, medical coder, revenue cycle specialist, patient account representative.

Work a clinic's billing morning: code three visits from their notes, fix the claims the scrubber stopped, work two denials, post a paper EOB and explain a bill to the right person on the phone.

Works like Medidata Rave, Oracle Clinical One or REDCap. For clinical research coordinator, clinical research associate, clinical data coordinator, research assistant, regulatory coordinator.

Run a research site's day in a made-up Phase 2 study: screen two candidates and enroll the eligible one after consent, enter a visit from source with unit conversions, answer three monitor queries, book visits inside their windows and log the late one, and record an adverse event with its seriousness and 24-hour report.

Works like Epic Cadence, athenaOne or NextGen. For patient access representative, medical scheduler, front desk coordinator, patient service representative, medical receptionist.

Run a made-up clinic's scheduling desk: book a new patient, a follow-up and a procedure by template and payer rules, find a caller with a namesake and fix their coverage, work a sick provider's bump list by priority and offer the freed holds, close out no-shows by policy, and route a red-flag call by script.

Works like Apricot, CaseWorthy or Penelope. For case manager, case aide, social services assistant, community health worker, intake coordinator.

Work a community agency's caseload: screen two intakes and refer the one over the income limit, refer a client to a program with room, write a DAP note, hold records under a lapsed release and book the renewal, and send a concern to a supervisor the same day.

Works like Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, Blackbaud Raiser's Edge or Bloomerang. For development associate, development coordinator, donor relations coordinator, fundraising assistant, nonprofit program associate, grants assistant.

Work a nonprofit's week after its fall gala: batch and balance a deposit, send the receipts the rules require, merge a duplicate and leave its decoy, credit a household gift and a matching-gift claim, then pull a grant report's restricted spending and build the year-end LYBUNT list.

Works like Microsoft Word with Track Changes. For paralegal, legal operations, contracts administration, procurement.

Mark up a vendor's services agreement against the company playbook: redline what's off with tracked changes, explain each one, and catch the renewal they slipped in.

Works like Relativity, Everlaw or DISCO. For paralegal, litigation support specialist, document review attorney (contract), legal assistant, e-discovery analyst.

Run a made-up dispute's first level review: build the protocol's search to the exact hit count, code a batch of ten with families and waiver, log the privileged ones, redact a privileged paragraph and an SSN, and build a Bates numbered production with legends and slip sheets.

Works like Clio, MyCase or PracticePanther. For legal assistant, paralegal, docketing clerk, legal secretary, law office administrator.

Run a made-up small firm's week: catch the intake whose other side is a former client and route it, docket three deadlines with their weekend, holiday and mail-service rolls and reminders, enter an attorney's time in tenths, bill two invoices against trust and close a file with a refund and its retention date.

Works like PowerPoint or Keynote. For product, marketing, consulting, every role.

Build a stakeholder update from launch data, then present it.

Works like Microsoft Outlook calendar or Google Calendar. For administrative assistant, executive assistant, office coordinator, office manager, receptionist, project coordinator.

Run a made-up executive's week as their assistant: find the one hour four people in three time zones can meet and book a room with video, give a board member's hour priority and move the sync it bumps, move one team meeting for a holiday without touching the series, add travel to an off-site lunch, and make an appointment private while answering invites by the delegation rules.

Works like a real first-round interview. For every role.

Four real interview questions about the work you did, with honest feedback and the resume lines it earned.