My Eight-Point Plan For Doing A Good Interview

This plan is for doing interviews in person or on the phone. An email interview, which is how I do most of my interviews since leaving paid journalism, is a different creature. I’ll deal with email interviews in a separate article. As I’ve written previously, the main difference comes down to the importance of listening.

Listening and silence are great tools and/or weapons for you to use as an interviewer. You lose that when you do interviews via email because they can plan their answers. On the other hand, that change is one of the reasons why some are now insisting on being interviewed that way.

My Eight Point Plan For Doing A Good Interview

1. While I wasn’t a Boy Scout, I do know and endorse their motto: Be Prepared. The worst thing you can do if you interview someone is to go in to the interview unprepared. I always cringe when I see people do interviews on TV where it becomes obvious the person has not read the book or seen the movie they are there to talk about. I insist on finishing every book — no matter how bad, and a few have been horrible — for which I do an interview or review.

For the purpose of this article, let’s say you are doing an interview with a politician. You’ll want to read other interviews the politicians has done. Read biographical information about the politician. Pay attention to what topics most interest you and — provided they fit whatever your actual assignment is — jot them down. You can’t fake interest (at least not easily). If you have a topic of shared interest, that’s always a great starting point.

Note also what questions the politicians evaded in prior interviews. Depending on whether you want your interview to be soft or hard, jot these questions down. Don’t worry at this point about the order of your questions and thoughts.

2. Write down questions you want to ask. Use them as guideposts, not as a script. Let me give a personal example. In my first years of journalism I was not only wet behind the ears, I was also shy. My wish upon starting an interview was for it to be over as soon as possible. As a result I’d leave and realize I never got answered half the questions I needed answered. I’d have to do another interview over the phone. What they took for persistence and wanting to get it right was really me screwing up and finding ways to cover for it.

Article Author: Scott Butki

Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education.

He is an in-house media critic, a recovering Tetris addict and a proud uncle.

Visit Scott Butki's author page — Scott Butki's Blog