Interviewing Skills

  • An interview is a purposeful conversation between two or more people that follows a basic question and answer format.
  • Interviewing is more formal than most other conversations because it has a pre-set purpose and uses a focused structure.
  • There are many kinds of interviews. For example, the employment interview, information gathering interview, counselling interview, interrogatory interview, radio-television interview, and research interview.

Interview Format

  • Once the objectives of the interview are established, the interviewer prepares an interview format.
  • The basic format, regardless of the interview’s purpose, is divided into three stages:

Opening of the Interview

  • It involves establishing rapport between two communicators.
  • The purpose is to make the interviewee comfortable.
  • Generally, the interviewer starts the conversation and does most of the talking at the outset.
  • This serves two functions:
  1. it establishes the goal of interview
  2. it gives the interviewee time to become comfortable with the situation and the interviewer

Body of the Interview

  • It is the heart of the process.
  • In this stage, the interviewer asks questions in an attempt to generate information and data that are required for the purpose.

Sequence of Questions

  • To accomplish the purpose of an interview, the interviewer prepares a set of questions, also called a schedule, for different domains, or categories s/he wants to cover.
  • To do this, the interviewer must first decide on the domains/categories under which information is to be generated.
  • These categories and the questions within them are framed ranging from easy-to-answer to difficult-to-answer.
  • Questions are also formulated to assess facts as well as subjective assessment.

Closing the Interview

  • While closing the interview, the interviewer should summarise what s/he has been able to gather.
  • One should end with a discussion of the next step to be taken.
  • When the interview is ending, the interviewer should give a chance to the interviewee to ask questions or offer comments.

Types of Interview Questions