How to interview someone: the skill nobody teaches
Interviewing — for a job, an article, a podcast, research — is one skill wearing different clothes: get a human to tell you true, specific, interesting things. The mechanics barely change: prepare enough to be curious, ask short open questions, listen harder than feels natural, and follow the thread instead of the script. Here's the craft, plus what changes per context.
The universal mechanics
Prepare until you're curious, not scripted. Research the person until real questions form — the goal of preparation isn't a list, it's informed curiosity. Bring 6–8 anchor questions; expect to use four.
Ask short, open questions. Every word you add narrows the answer. 'Tell me about the day it fell apart' beats a three-part question with your theory embedded in it. If your question contains 'because' or 'right?', you're answering it yourself.
Listen with your full attention and follow up on what they actually said — the second question is where every great interview lives. The discipline: your next question should usually be built from their last answer, not your list.
Let silence work. People fill pauses with the true version. The urge to rescue a silence is the most common interviewer mistake across every context.
Interviewing someone for a job
Add structure: the same core questions per candidate, scored against a rubric, because here your output is a fair comparison, not a story. Push for specifics relentlessly — 'we' answers hide individual contribution; ask 'what was YOUR part?'
Your constraint is legal and ethical fairness: stay on job-relevant territory and keep conditions consistent across candidates. See our full guide to conducting a job interview for structure, timings and scoring.
Interviewing someone for an article or podcast
Here you want stories, not comparisons — so trade structure for depth. Sequence emotionally: easy origin questions first, the hard or vulnerable material at two-thirds distance, land somewhere forward-looking.
Ask for scenes: 'take me back to that morning — what do you remember?' produces usable material; 'how did that feel?' produces adjectives. For podcasts, remember the audience can't see nods — verbalise transitions and let guests finish sentences cleanly for the edit.
The pre-interview matters: five minutes of warm-up chat before recording relaxes guests; but don't let them tell the best story off-mic — park it ('save that one, I'll ask again when we're rolling').
The mistakes every context shares
The same five failures show up in job interviews, journalism and podcasts alike:
- Talking too much — the interviewer's job is under 25% of the airtime
- Asking two questions at once — they'll answer the easier one
- Sticking to the script when the interesting thread just appeared
- Accepting the first, rehearsed version of an answer — follow up
- Performing cleverness instead of curiosity — the interview isn't about you
We're building an AI candidate you can rehearse real interviews on — built from the actual CV, with coaching on your technique. Free for the first cohort.
FAQ
How do you interview someone for the first time?
Prepare enough to be genuinely curious (not scripted), open with easy questions, keep questions short and open, follow up on what they actually say, and let silences breathe. If it's a job interview, add structure: consistent questions and a scoring rubric. And rehearse once out loud — interviewing is a performance skill; the first run shouldn't be live.
What are good questions to ask when interviewing someone?
Short, open, specific-past-tense questions outperform everything: 'Tell me about a time…', 'Walk me through the day that…', 'What happened next?'. For jobs, map every question to an attribute you're assessing — see our question banks for annotated sets by interview stage and trait.
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General hiring guidance, not legal advice. Employment law varies by jurisdiction — check locally before adopting questions or processes.