Interview Tips!

Getting a Good Interview

The first thing to remember with interviewing is that while you need to come prepared with specific questions to ask, you also need to be prepared to throw those questions out the window if something more interesting comes up. Be ready to ask follow-up questions and to follow the conversation where the person you’re interviewing leads it—it may end up taking you to a different but more interesting place than you intended. For a thirty-minute interview, a list of 10-15 questions is probably a good number to have prepared in advance. Do not just “wing it”—even if it’s someone you know well, you still need to have questions ready!

1. Start with a specific question, rather than a vague one. “Tell me about yourself” is really vague; “Tell me about the place you grew up” is better. With your first interview, it’s okay to ask more general questions, but you should still have some idea of the slant you want to take with your interview. Decide before you write your questions which aspect of the person’s life you want to focus on, but be willing to shift that if need be.

2. Try to ask questions that require the person to tell you specific stories, or anecdotes, rather than general information. Anecdotes make for much more interesting writing. Examples:
o “Tell me about the first time you knew you wanted to be a ___________”
o “Can you remember a time when you doubted yourself? How did you feel?”
o “What is the best part of your day?”

3. After you get some of these specific stories, you can follow up with further questions about them. So, if the person you’re interviewing is a doctor and she tells you that her moment of doubt was when her first patient died, you’ll want to ask follow-up questions about that experience that give you the real details of the moment—the sights, sounds, thoughts running through her head, etc. You could ask her to describe the first thing she saw when she left the emergency room, for example. These are the kinds of memories and details that Relin uses in Three Cups to make Mortenson’s experience come alive.

4. One great idea for an anecdotal question is to ask the person to show you a favorite photo and explain it to you. This only really works if you’re at the person’s home, though you could also ask the person to bring some photos to the interview if you’re doing it somewhere else. This requires the person to give you concrete details about a particular event, which is exactly what you want.

5. Sometimes the best material you’ll get is when you say that you’re ready to go, so be ready to listen at that moment, and write like crazy!

6. Take good notes! Even with a tape recorder, it’s important that you write down what you hear, too. You will need to use direct quotes in your final piece, so make sure you are accurate in everything you write down—it’s very important not to misquote someone else’s words.