Structuring an interview

Structuring an interview is extremely important as you can't neccessarily fly straight into the hard long questions as it will completely put the interviewee straight of and you will not get good answers out of it especially the ones you hoped for. You as an interviewer are there to recieve the best possible interview so therefore you must structure it in order for it to interest the target audience, you will also have to structure it so that you can get the response you wanted, a variety of interviews are structured in the following way:

1. Intro: All traditional interviews should start with an intro. This will help introduce the interviewee to the subject being converse and to help them relax before your main key questions onwards.

2. Developmental questions: developmental questions are usually light hearted questions to get the interview started. The developmental questions frequently also set the mood to the interview for example, the interviewer would ask simple short light hearted questions which will lead the whole interview to feel more relaxing for the interviewee. For example: Hi, how are you?

3. Confidence building: Before you begin asking questions, it is a good idea to involve some confidence building questions. This will assist your interviewee to develop confidence and to conquer any nerves, this will ensure that when you ask your key questions, they will reply with confidence and provide nice long detailed answers. A good way to build up confidence is to ensure that you drop a few compliments to the person during the interview.

4. Key questions: the key questions are the most important part of your interview as these are what the whole interview is based on. Key questions tends to come in early in an interview because it identifies the topic of the interview and paves the way for more complex questions onwards. Although if the subject of the interview is more emotional and personal then the key questions will be placed asked in the middle of the interview. Placing them further into the interview gives the interviewee a chance to feel relax and comfortable.

5. Soundbites: soundbites are little sections that can be cut out of interviews, it could be used to advertise the interview as a whole. Maybe after you have asked your key questions in the interview and you realise that you have nothing that can form a good soundbite, you would then as a question that would provide you this.

6. Summary: at the end of the interview you need to summarise all the questions you have asked in a question you believe can get a good conclusion on the topic of the interview.

7. Wind up: the windup is the last thing in the interview and it just closes up the interview, it brings the whole thing to an end. You would normally finish on a nice light hearted question, then thank the person for doing the interview.