October 2, 2007
Being Interviewed on Interviewing
Today I was interviewed about how to interview people by Jessalyn Coolbaugh, a copywriter friend of Ben Mack’s.
It was her first interview… and she actually did a darn good job of it, especially for someone who is a self-professed extremely shy introvert.
Hey, I’m an introvert too… and I always say that’s not a bad thing for interviewers, because the #1 skill an interviewer needs to have is listening. And introverts make the best listeners because they’re usually focused on other people instead of themselves.
But I was expecting someone beyond shy, based on how she described herself, and yet true to form for most introverts, you would never have known.
Besides the #1 interviewing skill, I shared some of my tricks with her. But the questioning focused a lot around how to get a guest rather than the types of questions to ask, so I never got into my schtick about open-ended neutral questions like I do in my book, Interviewing Unwrapped.
Bottom line in a nutshell? Stick to questions that start with the journalistic 5 W’s — Who, What, Where, When, Why… or the H, How.
