As of 13 August 2026, AI can answer “When can you start?” in an interview.

What to actually do

1. Do it yourself

   The route this page recommends

   A chat interface, no skill needed, and roughly 5 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your employment contract or HR records and find your contractual notice period.
   2. Check your calendar for your earliest realistic start date, including booked leave, exams, caring responsibilities and other commitments.
   3. Paste the prompt into a chatbot and replace every bracketed slot with your own facts, using “not applicable” or “none” where needed.
   4. Ask the chatbot to produce the three versions and select the one that matches both your availability and the tone of the interview.
   5. Compare the selected answer against your contract and calendar, then change any date or flexibility claim you could not honour.
   6. Practise saying the answer aloud once so it sounds like a direct response rather than a written script.

   Prompt

   Help me answer the interview question “When can you start?” for a UK job. Use only the facts I provide and invent nothing.
   
   Role: [job title]
   Current employment status: [employed, unemployed, studying, on a career break, or other]
   Contractual notice period: [notice period, or “not applicable”]
   Earliest realistic start date: [date or timeframe]
   Any planned leave or commitments: [details, or “none”]
   Flexibility I genuinely have: [details, or “none”]
   What I want to communicate: [for example, enthusiasm, flexibility, or a firm date]
   
   Give me three spoken answers: one concise, one warm and flexible, and one for when I cannot start as soon as the employer wants. Keep each answer natural, truthful and suitable for an interview. Do not promise a date that conflicts with my notice period or commitments. After the answers, briefly state which factual points I must check before saying them aloud.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Hand it to a person

   The distant third

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.