After Louise spoke at the lectorial about the ‘four W’s in an interview’, I began thinking about these W’s and how they help to make a great interview.
- It’s important to keep in mind why the interview is happening and what the whole purpose actually is. This makes it harder to go off track and talk about irrelevant things, ensuring that the interview remains informative and engaging relating to the particular topic.
- It’s important to fully know who you’re interviewing; basic things about them, their personality, their likes and dislikes so on.
- It’s important to keep in mind what the content is about so again it’s harder to go off topic, and when the interview will take place
Personally when I watch an interview either online or on TV, it consists of a montage of shots being played whilst the subject answers the questions proposed by the interviewers. The camera every now and then cuts back to the subject whilst they are answering the questions and can often cut back to the interviewer asking the question or responding to the subject’s answer (head nod, ‘uh huh’ etc.)
A good interview consists of:
- Smooth and natural answers by the interviewee
- Confident asking of questions by interviewer
- Laughs every now and then between the interviewer and interviewee to make it less serious and more light hearted (as well as more natural)
Many things can make a bad interview. However, the most obvious and cringe-worthy thing is when the interviewer asks an ‘out of bounds’ question where the interview is forced to awkwardly respond with ‘uhhh no I don’t want to answer that’ or ‘aren’t we hear to talk about ….’, leaving the interviewer to react with a ‘uhh yeah’ or even worse; ‘sorry, sorry’. These are so hard to watch, and what sticks in our heads the most when thinking back on the interview or throughout the rest of the interview.
A few examples of this situation are included below: