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Information Interviews

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• The most obvious requirements are those for audio and video purposes ... to get people's opinions, testimonials, ideas, feedback from research exercises, and many more.

• We also need to interview people if we want to use their views in text form for such things as corporate brochures, press releases, information packs, testimonials in promotional literature, training manuals, web copy, email marketing, white papers, etc.

• Finally, knowing how to interview for information purposes is very useful as a research tool, even if all you need from the outcome is a few notes. The following tips will help you obtain the right sort of information, in the minimum amount of time.

Never, never make it up...

The bad old days where you, as a business person and/or marketer, could mock up an interviewee's quote are - thankfully - long since dead and buried. Testimonials, in particular, are a controversial area at the best of times. The only way you can make them credible is by using the real words that real people say. And that applies to just about any other form of real quotation that you will use for whatever business purpose.

Employment-type or journalistic interview techniques don't work

With job interviews you obviously have a very clear-cut agenda, and may justifiably seek to put the interviewee under some pressure to see how s/he performs. In information interviews, pressure is the last thing you need. The skills required by the interviewer here are entirely different.

The same applies to journalistic interviewing, which often seeks to put pressure on the interviewee too. In the journalist's case it's not to see how the interviewee performs under pressure, but to be adversarial - to try to wrong-foot them and catch them off guard. This makes for more "interesting" TV, radio or press content.

Forget scripts: they always make an interview seem false and insincere

Some people - particularly producers of video or audio material and their clients - think they will save time and effort by getting someone to write suggested responses for the interviewee to say. This is sheer lunacy.

In my long experience of writing and interviewing for video and audio programs I have never once known even a talented actor come over naturally when quoting pre-written "spontaneous" lines. When we get to ordinary folks reading their "spontaneous" responses, the whole thing descends into a hilarious fiasco. And that has a nasty way of translating across to text versions of "spontaneous" quotes, too.

What other issues are there to consider?

Corporate politics, for one. You may face one of the following two problems:

1. The person is a client or one of your superiors. In asking questions you may be tempted to be too formal, too hesitant, and maybe even grovel a bit ... it's hard to feel on equal terms with the person who signs your paycheck. Yet you must be on equal terms to get a good information interview.

2. The person is well below you in the corporate pecking order. They may well feel that you're one of the "bosses" so the responses you get to your questions may be what they think you want to hear - rather than the naked truth. And the process of being interviewed may scare the pants off them, too. This is bad news. Very nervous interviewees talk in squeaky voices and tend to speak nonsense, which you don't need.

Sometimes it's worth getting an independent person to do such interviewing for you, because people usually open up more to a corporate outsider than to someone who is a fully paid-up colleague. But don't worry, there are ways of avoiding that one. Read on!

Preparing your questions

The questions you prepare before doing an interview should be not so much questions, as a list of fairly thorough bullet points. And especially if you're working on video or audio, it's preferable to put your questions in the correct order, in which you want the outcome interview to flow.

What you need to do is analyse the person you're going to interview, and the contribution s/he can make, as against the information you need to see conveyed in the interview. Let's suppose you're making a retail staff recruitment program for a large chain of stores, and you need an interview with a typical store manager.

First of all, here's your analysis of the person and her/his potential contribution:

1. Experienced store manager; knows what's expected of store staff and the types of person who are most successful

2. Has good experience of customers and what they expect from staff

3. Has worked her/his way up through the management hierarchy, starting at the bottom as a sales assistant

4. Is a good leader and encourages staff to go on training courses and seek promotion

5. Is an ambitious person her/himself and is likely to come across in "management speak" rather than in the terms potential store staff will identify with

Now, look at what you want and need to get out of this interview:

1. The viewpoint of someone who is "management," but still works at the sharp end dealing with customers

2. How it feels to have started from the bottom and worked up to store manager level

3. The opportunities for career progression within the store group

4. What qualities are needed by store staff if they are to be successful

Okay. Here are the bullet points you might develop out of all that, in a logical flow.

• Description of how s/he started and how her/his career progressed

• What sort of training s/he had

• Why s/he chose to work towards being a manager

• What is it that makes a good sales assistant

• What the customer expects from sales assistants

• What advice s/he would give to anyone thinking of joining the company as a sales assistant

How those questions will shake down

We know that the interviewee concerned is very experienced and competent, but if left to her/his own devices is likely to aim her/his answers at the senior managers who will see, hear or read her/his responses. This is because s/he is ambitious and wants to get noticed.

So what we do here is prepare questions that will ensure the interviewee makes a contribution that is valid for potential sales assistants. Posing questions about the person's own career progression will impress the audience/readers.

The answers about what makes a good sales assistant and what the customer expects are likely to elicit "management speak," but in this case that's OK - we want the audience/readers to know that standards here are very professional.

Finally the advice s/he could give the audience is probably going to come from the heart; people love to give advice, and in this instance statements about it being great fun but hard work are probably true (good for the audience/readers) and likely to impress senior managers favourably (good for the interviewee's promotion prospects.)

Leave your questions loose

Don't be too rigid in your phrasing of questions. There's a good reason for this; sometimes in answering one question, and interviewee will move on and answer another one you haven't even asked yet. Keep yourself flexible.

The warm-up: an essential part you must get right

You may or may not have met the person before, but whichever is the case there is one golden rule about information interviewing that you must follow no matter what. It comes in two parts, and here they are:

A) The interviewee is the most interesting and important person in your entire life.

B) If the interview is going to work, the interviewee must believe that s/he is the most interesting and important person in your life. And because people are not stupid and can smell falsehood from a mile away, you must believe this too.

I'm not joking. If you believe, your interview will work. If you don't, it won't.

One of the most important parts of the warm up, especially when this is the first time you've ever met the interviewee, is for you and her/him to establish a good rapport. Naturally you will need to talk about the interview, so that your interviewee knows what to expect.

But once you have accomplished that I think it's a good idea to stop talking about the interview, and use the remaining warm-up time to get to know the interviewee as a person. Ask her/him about her/his job, hobbies, children, local area, or anything that gets them talking without, obviously, intruding on their privacy.

A friendly chat like this certainly helps to break the ice and provided that you're a good conversationalist, will make the interviewee feel that s/he knows you quite well. That helps a lot in making the final interview come across in a relaxed and natural manner.

Some further tips on how to approach a F2F or phone interview

• You may well have prepared a formal list of questions to ask your interviewee, and that's fine. What isn't fine is to show or email the list to her/him. You may well get pressurized to do this by your boss, her/his boss, or someone else. However in my experience to do so is a killer, because the interviewee's responses will not be truly spontaneous. By all means outline the topics you're going to cover - that's perfectly OK. But how you phrase the questions must be kept under your hat, so the answers are fresh.

• If your interview is to show the interviewee on camera, do yourself and the program editors a favour and tell your interviewee NOT to answer any of your questions with a "yes" or a "no." Obviously you will structure your questions so that a "yes/no" answer is not relevant, but some interviewees answer with a "yes" or a "no" anyway. What you need from her/him is a statement.

• Another point only relevant to on-camera interviews ... tell your interviewee to look at you, not the camera. There's nothing that makes someone look more shifty and untrustworthy than if their eyes are flicking back and forth between you and the camera lens.

Starting the interview

The first question to ask (at least in my own experience) is a "discard" question. This is because no matter how experienced and well prepared the interviewee might be, s/he may well be still be a bit nervous and unsettled at the beginning. So, you ask a general question as a "bum settler" - the response to which you don't really need for the final outcome. Sometimes, not very often though, the response you get to the first "discard" question is very useful. In that case, keep it for later. However don't get your hopes up on this one.

Phrasing your questions

Although we don't use journalistic interviewing techniques for business-related information interviews, there is one leaf we can take out of their book. And that is, the formula for asking questions that do not demand a "yes/no" answer. These questions are phrased with the following prefixes: 

• what
• who
• where
• why
• when
• which
• how
• etc.

There's no reason why, though, you shouldn't start your question with a bit of a preamble to get the ball rolling. For example:

YOU: How will the training course benefit your staff?

TRAINING MANAGER: By showing them how to serve the customer better and more effectively. After all, that's what we're in business for.

.........not the response you wanted from that particular question., Here's how I would lead the training manager into the question, so s/he has no doubt as to the response I'm expecting:

YOU: Now obviously, Mr Bloggs, the main objective of the course is to help your staff give better service to the customer. But how exactly will the course benefit staff themselves?

TRAINING MANAGER: The course will help staff to do their jobs better, which means they get more satisfaction out of helping the customer. And by doing their jobs better, of course, they'll be in a stronger position if they happen to be looking for promotion.

Specific types of question

Sometimes you will want to build up enthusiasm in your interviewee, so that the response will come over as inspiring and motivating. No matter how much you have prepared the interviewee in the warm up, usually you will still need to generate enthusiasm in your preamble. Let's suppose you want a shining endorsement of the new training course from the training manager.

The wrong way to question her/him:

YOU: Why is this course so good?

INTERVIEWEE: It's good because it has been designed by some of the best retail experts in the United States, and it uses all the most modern training techniques.

A bit boring, maybe? How about this:

YOU: (smiling enthusiastically) Mr Bloggs, I understand this new course really is revolutionary and is going to make a tremendous difference to the way staff perform out there with the customer. But briefly, what would you say makes it so special?

INTERVIEWEE: It uses all that new training techniques. They're fantastic - proven by some of the top retail training experts in the States, who designed the course in the first place. It's miles more effective than anything we've done before. Truly outstanding.

Slippery slopes: pressing the point

There may come a time when the interviewee tries to evade a question. Usually you will have got a hint of that possibility during the warm up. But sometimes the harsh reality of an interview situation will make her/him think twice about committing her/himself to something that may not necessarily meet with her/his Chairman's approval, or may make her/him look a little bit less than perfect.

You may need a definitive question to get around this one, so your interview outcome is good. Here you might need to lean on the interviewee a bit...

YOU: Why is this new training course so much better than anything you've done previously?

INTERVIEWEE: Well of course, I didn't mean to suggest that previous training courses weren't very good. They were all excellent. It's just that this one is more up to date. You know, it uses more modern techniques.

YOU: Of course, I appreciate that Mr Bloggs. But you did say that this new course is much more effective than anything your company had done before. Now, just why is that?

INTERVIEWEE: It's more effective because it's based on customer needs that are right up to date. The whole face of retail has changed a lot in the last few years and I suppose earlier training courses were based on customer needs that existed a few years ago - rather than those of today and tomorrow. This new course prepares staff not only for customer service now, but for the future as well.

So by going in there a bit harder, but in a nice, positive way, you have allowed the interviewee to get out of a potentially embarrassing spot (potentially being rude about earlier training courses) and make a very useful point.

Return questions

Something else you may have to do is return to a question and try again. This may be for a number of reasons, for example:

• In the case of a video or audio recording, there may have been some background noise or other glitch while the interviewee was speaking - that can spoil the recording's quality

• The interviewee may have misinterpreted your question and answered inaccurately

• S/he may have wandered off-topic and talked about something else (don't be tempted to interrupt, however, as that "something else" might turn out to be useful information.)

YOU: (original question) How much time and effort do you expect staff to put into this training course?

YOU: (return question) As I understand it, Mr Bloggs, the company provides all the hardware and software needed to complete the course. But in term of personal input, just what do staff need to contribute to make it work for them?

The unforeseen response

Once in a while you may find yourself up against an interviewee who is either more experienced at giving interviews than you think, or else suddenly finds fresh confidence and responds to a question in a way that takes you totally by surprise. Some people may say one thing about a particular issue in the warm up, and then say something completely different in the interview itself. 

This is not the end of the world in an interview that is not being recorded. However in one you want to use for video or audio purposes, it's important that you don't falter. Listen carefully to the unforeseen response and if you can, develop the next question out of it. If you can't, move on to the next question on your list, provided that it isn't likely to stray into the same ground as the unforeseen response. If it does, jump to the next question along and then, if necessary, use a return question later on to cover the question missed. 

Although interviewing for information purposes isn't as much of a tennis match as a journalistic interview, it's still important that you - as the interviewer - keep control of the whole thing. If the interviewee feels that you have lost control (whether by accident or because s/he has deliberately wrong-footed you) in the end the quality of the interview will suffer. 

Closing the interview

At the end of an interview it can be very useful to pose one or two summary questions. Often this is an excellent opportunity to obtain succinct "sound bite" quotes, and can also provide short quotes that can be used effectively throughout a document or web page. 

One issue, though, is that in asking a summary question you're likely to repeat (or nearly repeat) a question you have asked the interviewee earlier on. What you must remember here is that interviewees aren't stupid. So if you just ask her/him a summary question without a suitable preamble, s/he probably will find it odd and may not respond as you would like her/him to. 

Some examples: first, the wrong way... 

YOU: So, briefly, what is it that makes this training course so different from previous courses your company has run? 

INTERVIEWEE: Well, we've already covered that point earlier on. I think I outlined the main benefits then. 

No good. Try this... 

YOU: Mr Bloggs, earlier on we went into the advantages of the new course in some detail. But very briefly now, in summary, what would you say is the main benefit of the new course? 

Don't worry, by the way. Although you've asked for one main benefit, in these circumstances you'll almost certainly get more than one, but only the important ones. If you ask for all the main benefits you'll get a long answer which at this point you do not need. 

INTERVIEWEE: The main benefit is that the course is designed to help staff meet the needs of customers both today, and tomorrow. And it helps staff to perform their jobs better, which is good for them - more satisfaction, and better promotion prospects.

Some further points...

• If your interview is being recorded, it's important that you maintain eye contact with the interviewee and acknowledge their words with nods, smiles and body language. Whatever you do, though, avoid saying anything or even grunting approvingly, because that will ruin the soundtrack of the interview.

• Even if your interview is not being recorded, never interrupt your interviewee. If they go off on an undesirable track wait until they stop to draw breath, then politely turn the conversation to the topic and question in hand.

• Be sure that whatever else you do, you listen to every word the interviewee says. Often you can create very useful new questions on the strength of something s/he has said, leading to new sources of information you hadn't thought of before.

• Never agree to interview someone if her/his boss or your boss wants to watch and/or sit in on the interview. The vocal presence of any third party - whoever that is - is bound to interfere with your concentration and that of your interviewee, especially if the third party has the ability to make you or her/him nervous. Even if you're in no position to do so, fight tooth and claw against it - throw your handbag on the floor or your toys out of your pram - and swear it's all in the best interest of corporate homogeneity. (It is.)

• If your interview is being recorded and the interviewee has little or no experience of such things, try to keep the clutter and equipment out of her/his sight. You can't avoid having a camera peering over your shoulder if it's a video shoot, but if it's audio you can keep the equipment on a discreet low table. And if it's the sort of equipment that needs to be monitored, get someone else to do it behind the interviewee. Don't fiddle with equipment yourself in full view of the interviewee.

Doing interviews by email

These days I often interview people via email as they are too busy to invite me into their sanctuaries with a tape recorder and I'm quite happy not to drive umpty-dump miles to do so.

If you do this, be sure to use the same principles that I have outlined here. In other words do the "warm up" in a preliminary email, and follow that with your selection of questions phrases exactly as you would phrase them in person. Write them with space beneath to make it easy for the interviewee to respond.

Interviewing someone you know well

This is a final thought but one that has had caught me unawares in a couple of interviews - and I have conducted about 2,000 in my time, so this is not a common one, OK! 

It's probably more useful if I recount one of my own experiences, so here it is. 

I was senior writer and script editor on a series of educational TV programmes about tourism, and needed to set up a program whereby we mocked up a marketing campaign for a fictitious tourist resort. As budget was very limited I enlisted the help of three old friends who, in fairness, were extremely well qualified to be the "professionals" I needed to interview. 

The first two were well used to presenting - one was deputy creative director of an international advertising agency, and the other was CEO of an international travel organization (who had also been a DJ for a Californian radio station and really did have the gift of the gab.)

So, my interviews with these two went superbly well. That was because we were all "acting" - me in my role as interviewer, them in their roles as advertising and travel marketing experts respectively. 

Interviewee #3 was the problem. A friend for 25 years, he is a brilliant PR man who had always been independent and is one of the most sincere people I know. But when the camera rolled and I went into my "acting" interviewer mode, he couldn't handle it. He kept reverting and relating to me as I am in our long-standing friendship, questioning my questions, and dithering about in an alarming manner. We got enough footage to achieve our objectives in the end but it was a fiendish challenge for me. 

Moral of the story? Try to avoid interviewing people you know very well. It may be ironic, but people do "perform" better for someone they don't know, or at least someone they don't know very well.