Time and money are at stake when the cameras start to roll on your interview. Don’t waste the limited time you have asking dead-end questions. Here are 6 tips for writing interview questions that get interesting responses, the basic facts, and the story points you’ll need to make a great video.
6 TIPS we’ll be covering to write interview questions:
- Research the person you’re interviewing
- Find the purpose of the interview and how it fits into your story
- Establish the facts
- Phrase questions for best responses
- Emotional and reflective questions
- Structure your questions
1 Research the Person You’re Interviewing
Your interviewee is your guest, show them you know about them and that you’ve done your homework. Research and understand the basic information about your interviewee’s background, experiences, profession, goals, and anything relevant to your story. This research will help you write questions. Here are three ways to research your interviewee:
- Look up your interviewee on Google, social media, Youtube, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media platforms
- Ask your interviewee for links to their previous interviews
- Research any articles they have written or been quoted in
2 Define the Purpose for the Interview
Before writing your interview questions: establish why you’re interviewing this person specifically? In other words, how will this person help your story?
Will the interviewee:
- Support or be the focus of this video?
- Provide an alternate viewpoint?
- Inform viewers about a new product, service, methodology, news report?
- Add expertise?
When you have a clear purpose for the interview, it’s easier to write the interview questions and easier to understand how they fit into your video as a whole.
3 Establish the facts
In many videos, the interviewees are solely telling the story unless you’re also using voice over to fill out the story. What this means is that if you don’t get the interview bites you need on camera during the interview, you’re stuck. So, make sure you get all the story points you need during the interview.
Ask questions to help establish the facts and context for your story
Imagine you’re interviewing an entrepreneur who is here to sell their latest dog food brand. Prepare to ask your interviewee simple factual questions, here are a few examples:
- What is your name and the name of the dog food brand? How do you spell it?
- What is your title at work or what would you like your title to be on camera?
- When will the dog food be available?
- Where can customers purchase this dog food?
4 Phrase Questions for Best Responses
Open-ended Questions garner conversational and example-driven responses. They invite interviewees to provide elaborate and detail-oriented descriptions. Interesting responses help tell interesting stories.
Close Ended Questions garner short answers or “yes” or “no” responses. “Yes” and no answers with no other response rarely help your video. Short answers are helpful for getting basic facts and information (see #3).
Here are some examples of how to re-phase a close-ended question to transform it into an open-ended question:
| Close-Ended Questions | Open-Ended Questions |
| Did [the event] happen as you expected? | How did [the event] compare to your expectations? |
| Would you recommend [this service]? | Why is [this service] important? |
| When did you realize [this] would happen? | How did you come to realize [this] would happen? |
Please note: you can change the wording of an open-ended question to garner different responses. For example:
HOW questions get stories about the process: How did you get involved in this industry?”
WHY questions get stories about motivation and accounts of behavior: “Why did you choose this industry?”
On the surface, these are similar questions. However, the “how” question will likely trigger a response about the process or career journey, while the “why” question will likely trigger a response about the motivation.
5 Emotional & Reflective Questions
Reflective questions will give you responses based on how the interviewee thinks and what they value. A reflective question can also encourage the interviewee to look back on an experience or assess a journey they have been on
Reflective Questions:
- “What were some of the unexpected hurdles?”
- “Looking back, what advice would you give…”
You may also want to ask questions that elicit an emotional response. Emotional questions can be reflective, but they can also tap into different feelings. A few examples are motivation, setbacks, disappointment. Emotional responses are engaging to audiences and often make the interviewee more relateable.
Emotional Questions:
- “How did you feel when…”
- “What motivated you to…”
6 Structure Your Questions
Think about the flow of your interview as generic to specific, factual to personal, and closed-ended to open-ended.
A Warm-Up: Start with Small Talk
Take time at the beginning of the interview to ask easy to answer questions that have nothing to do with your story. These will help your interviewee relax and feel comfortable with you from the beginning. Here are some examples:
- “Have you lived here for long?”
- “Where did you get those amazing shoes?”
- “What brought you to New York City?”
B Get the Facts
Once you get into the interview, start with factual questions that are easy to answer. Here are some examples:
- What is your name and how do you spell it?
- What is your title at work?
- How long have you [insert career?]
- What is the title of the book you recently published?
- What is the name of the company you founded?
C Reflective and Emotional Questions
Now that your interviewee is more comfortable, you can ask more difficult open-ended questions. These questions will likely lead to the most substantive answers.
- “What motivated you to…”
- “Looking back, how do you feel about…”
- “What is the hardest part about…”
D Closing the Interview
You want your interviewee to leave the interview feeling empowered. Give them a chance to add more to the interview. Here are a few examples of questions to ask:
- “Is there’s anything else they’d like to share?“
- “Is there something I didn’t ask you about that you’d like to share”
- “How do you feel about…”
- “What do the next five years look like?”
- “What is the most important message you want to convey to your audience?”
- “Do you have any words of advice for people watching this?”
If you’re comfortable, articulate, and thoughtful in the way you ask your questions, your interviewee will feel and do the same.
Conclusion:
A successful interview means your interviewee is comfortable and you’re getting responses that will help you tell a compelling story. Knowing your story points and relevant interview questions will help you keep focused during the interview and get the responses you need.
