How To Master the Art of Interviewing with 5 Easy Journalist Techniques

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- Okay you're gonna conduct an interview,

either audio or video.

You probably wanna know a few things and plan it out.

Here's five tips that you need to know,

before you actually start doing that.

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So you're gonna sit down and you're gonna go

"Oh hey dude."

"Um I just wanted to like say how's it going,

and how you doing and uh what's your name again?"

No!

You wanna research the person before you actually

do the interview because then you don't know anything,

plus the person you're researching will be like,

"Hey this guy knows what he's talking about!"

Go up on Google look at their LinkedIn profile.

Are you connected in any way?

Do you make similar videos?

Did you attend the same college?

Did you go to the same university?

Do you drink coffee at the same coffee shop?

Who the hell knows!

You gotta research it.

If the person works for a company the you should

research the company.

See what they do,

see what they contribute,

see what their job is.

See how the company's doing,

see how big they are,

see what their interests are.

That's what they're going to be interested in.

Do your research.

A lot of times you'll just email back and forth,

and back and forth.

Hey I wanna ask these questions and they'll

say okay that's cool and prep for this,

and prep for this.

You're prepping the other person too.

They just show up and go hi I'm here for an interview.

What are you gonna ask me?

Um you know when you were in tenth grade um no.

There's gonna be research and emails back and forth.

You can use a tool for that.

There's a tool called Clearbit and it'll help

you fill in all the blanks.

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Okay next you got your person right?

And you're talking back and forth,

we're gonna interview about this and we're gonna

stay on this subject and we're not gonna touch this subject.

Cool.

Now you need to figure out uh let's go shoot.

No!

You need a location like where are you going to go?

Where are you gonna sit?

What is it gonna look like?

Is it going to be in some dark alley someplace?

I think not.

You want something that has zero background noise.

Looks nice and you'll never be interrupted.

Right outer space.

That's usually not the case.

You're gonna need to find a location you're gonna deal,

need to deal with certain things that come up

while you're doing the interview and during the interview.

But instead of like obsessing over this perfect location,

find some place you know will be just,

it'll be semi-quiet you won't be interrupted,

there won't be someone coming in,

in the door and interrupting this person every time.

You do wanna shoot around restaurants and everything else.

You're gonna need to take extra efforts to make sure

there mic'd properly and everything else,

but if you're interviewing a restaurant owner,

sure shoot them in the restaurant,

just watch the noise level.

Another good place to interview the

person is in their office.

You're gonna have to do some cleanup and stuff like that,

or a coffee shop or a park,

or like somewhere that's just kind of neutral

and there's not a lot of stuff going on.

Now maybe you can't meet in person.

Well tools like Zoom allow you to conference

and you can piece things together and make it

look like there's something going on or just

present that you're conferencing with this person.

You can even book a conference room or get a quiet place

in your own house where you won't be interrupted.

I mean if you're sitting there and you're interviewing

some dude and phones ringing,

people coming in and knocking and stuffs going on

and they have a coffee machine sitting there

and people are coming and getting coffee,

it's just not gonna be cool.

You just think it through man.

Think it through like nice and easy and quiet and whatever.

The other thing about location shooting is no one ever

does this and I don't get it.

Why don't you do this?

Hang some signs out there.

Recording,

on the air,

don't interrupt,

knock and die!

That's a good one.

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Now you're gonna conduct this interview and maybe

you were going back and forth but you want like

ten questions open-ended that you wanna ask the person.

Hey tell me about your company.

Where'd you grow up?

Can you tell me more about your passions in life?

Just open-ended questions that the person can talk about.

And you wanna be prepared I mean if you're going

back and forth and this guy shows up and he's all

ready to talk and you're like well you know uh

blah b blah b blah and I wanna do this and then

we're gonna do the interview and yada na na.

And you're just talking and talking,

that's not an interview that's you talking.

Let the person talk,

ask them a question.

Let them answer the question.

You can always cut the stuff out later.

Just put your open-ended questions down somewhere.

You can use Google Docs,

you can use Evernote,

you can use an actual pad of paper with this thing

called a pencil.

I know it's old technology but it still works.

The other cool thing is you can end an interview

and you can say do you have any questions for me?

The person might ask you a question that you

answer and may open up a whole new dialogue and

all sorts of crunchy nuggets of information.

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Now if you're doing this interview and you're sitting

there with a notepad and you're scribbling and the

person's answering and you're doing this,

they're not gonna be engaged.

It's not gonna be fun.

You're gonna be and your pencil breaks.

Don't do that.

But you're gonna wanna record the

interview that's occurring.

One way is use your iPhone or whatever phone you have.

Put it on do not disturb and then just start the

recording and get it close to the people so you

have it really interview recorded.

Another way is buy an audio recorder.

I mean we did a whole thing on audio recorders.

Big long thing on audio recorders that'll show

you the right audio recorder to use.

Yeah do that.

If you're gonna interview over the phone,

you can use remote call recorder apps.

I think Rev has one.

You can also make a Zoom call and use their free

recording feature.

Hey look if you're gonna record someone,

you really need to ask their permission

if it's okay to record them.

I mean if you're doing an interview and it's all set up,

they know you're sitting down.

But if you're gonna go up to someone and say

hey I wanna ask you some questions and you hit a

recorder and you don't tell them,

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When you're done with the interview,

you need to transcribe that into the written material

for the blog post or whatever you happen to be doing.

Boy you know no journalist ever said this,

I can't wait to get home and transcribe this interview!

Yeah!

Research interviews and transcriptions,

these are really the most important parts of a

journalists work.

Do what I've told you to do.

Research the person you're going to interview with

a subject you're gonna interview,

then do the interview,

record it in some way,

and then get it transcribed.

Who could transcribe that?

PBS News Hour?

This American Life?

The Wall Street Journal?

Hm I wonder if they know what they're doing?

Harvard Business Review?

These guys use Rev to transcribe their stuff.

You wanna play with the big boys?

Get your stuff transcribed like a real person.

I'm sure there's a bunch of interview tips

and techniques we didn't cover so leave it in the

comment below and we'll read it and then we'll

reply it and the we'll put a little like thing on it,

And you'll have your own very personal thumbs up.

In fact if we really like it,

we'll do that little heart thing.

You could just spend the rest of your days going

I was hearted .

I hope that helps.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time!

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