Tips for Conducting an Interview

Whether you are writing a profile for an article or interviewing a new employee for a company newsletter or website, interview skills are important tools to have in your skillset.

Before starting an interview, I do a little research about who the person is, their title and their background. Often if you are being asked to interview someone for a publication or to write website copy for them, you should ask for a resume or CV from them ahead of time as well.

From this research, I set up a few general questions about the topic, whether they are talking about their job, a recent promotion, work they do in the community or an event coming up that they want to promote.

Always start with the basics though, ask how to spell their name, what pronouns they prefer to use, their work title. As a reporter, I usually had to ask their age and where they were from, but use your discretion and think about whether their age is relevant to the piece.

Figure out if this is a professional interview only – do they just want to talk about their job, how they do it, what they like about it?

Are you going to ask about their family as well or is that not part of the interview?

For some people their family is their inspiration or motivation, they may say they were a single mom who went back to work, or maybe they are the third generation who has worked in a certain field or owned a business, but for other interviews, family may not be part of the topics they want to include.

Profiles abound

It’s funny, at one of the newspapers I worked at we ran a daily profile, and back then it seemed like such a chore. It was pretty quick and easy, the same five questions or so, but as reporters we had a rotation and had to make sure every day there was a profile for the next day’s paper. If you were covering a meeting, had a feature due and all of a sudden realized it was your day for the profile, you were frantically scouring press releases or asking to trade with another reporter.

This taught me there are profiles everywhere. Whether we got a press release about a promotion at a local business, an Eagle Scout who just finished their final project or a volunteer at the local soup kitchen, all of these can be turned into an interesting profile.

The simplest profiles begin with the obvious, who, what, when and where questions. Who is this person, what to they do, where are they from, is there an event or when connected to the interview. But the most important question to keep in the back of your mind is “why does the reader care.”

Is your subject an honor roll student who won a geographic bee who loves to study maps because their grandfather bought them an atlas? Or a nurse who always wanted to help people? Finding out their why will make the profile more interesting to you and therefore more interesting to your reader.