Talk to Me

An interview is more focused, where you have an outcome in mind, where you need maybe an insight into this person's personality to see if this is someone you want to hire, or if there's an anecdote or a story that can illustrate a point that this person is trying to make. But it's a little more guided and outcome-based than a conversation.

Rachel Salaman: OK, that's great clarification. Your book, "Talk to Me" is a great handbook for journalists; what other roles can benefit from advice about interviewing?

Dean Nelson: I'm really glad you asked that question because the publisher really wanted me to broaden the approach of this book, so that it wouldn't just be for journalists. So that people in the medical profession, people in human resources, financial advising, podcasting, all of those places could benefit from this kind of an approach.

So I wrote the book with that broad approach in mind so that when we talk to one another (whether it's for legal purposes, or business purposes, or whatever), we can get into the deeper kinds of interactions than just the surface cliché answers.

And so if you're a financial planner, for instance, and you're trying to talk to a client about his or her goals, thinking through how you're going to ask those questions, preparing for that particular interaction, is going to make a big difference in the kind of interaction you have.

Rachel Salaman: And, in your view, what makes a good interview in any setting?

Dean Nelson: A good interview, in my opinion, reveals some kind of a human quality that either you didn't know was there before, or it involves some kind of a human interaction that goes beyond just an exchange of information.

If it's just an exchange of information I can just text you, or I could just find something on the internet about you. If I really wanted to dig into who you are, and what motivates you, and what makes you interesting, then that's going to be the result of a good interview.

Rachel Salaman: Now, before we turn to the content of the interview, and the outcomes that we want to achieve and how to get there, what are some things that we should think about on the practical side?

Dean Nelson: I think it's really important to think about a number of things before the interview actually occurs.

One is, is there a time frame within which this interview is going to occur? So, if I'm going to interview somebody, I will tell them how much time I think it's going to take. And I think a lot of people make the mistake, early on, of thinking, "Well, I'll probably need about an hour."

I would be much more minimal in my approach, and I am much more minimal – I'll say I need 15 to 20 minutes and I stick to that.

If we're still going really well in this interview – and I may set a little alarm on my watch or my mobile device, so that it goes off so they know I'm really sticking to that time frame – I might say, "I've got just a couple more questions, do you have a little more time where we can continue?" Then you're respecting that person's time. So there's that.

I think there's a real wisdom in thinking about where the interview should occur. If you're a human resources person, chances are it's going to be in your office. But where in your office? Is it going to be a couple of chairs that are facing each other? Is it going to be you across the desk from the other person? Is it going to be in a conference room?

Conference rooms, by the way, are just the worst. There's nothing in there that says human interaction is going to occur in this room. So, I think thinking about where the interview is going to take place, how long it's going to take place, and then having a bit of a plan as to what are the questions you're going to ask: what are the ones that you absolutely must ask and what are some that you're willing to abandon, if something more interesting comes along.

So these are all things that I think you have to consider before the interview even begins.

Rachel Salaman: Turning to the content of the interview now, and in the book you talk about "mining for gold," in the context of preparing for interviews. Could you talk us through a couple of examples of what you mean by this?

Dean Nelson: You probably will know the answers to most of your questions before the interview even begins.

Let's say it's a job interview. You already have the person's résumé, you already have what their social media presence has been – or at least you should, you should know all those things before that person comes into your office.

So what you're looking for are those little nuggets that reveal something beyond what their social media presence, or what their publication presence, or what their résumés, have already revealed. That's all information anybody could get.

What you're trying to find is that little nugget that says, "Oh, this is the personality behind this, this is the human being behind all of this other information." When I'm interviewing writers, for instance, for this Writer's Symposium that I do, I know the answer to most of these questions already; what I'm looking for is for them to tell me a story that brings out their personality, that brings out something about their motives, or something about an experience that they've had that isn't already widely known.

Rachel Salaman: And if we're talking about that in terms of preparation, it means putting in the time to, for example, read the work of that writer.

Dean Nelson: Well yes, read the work of that writer, or if you're interviewing somebody for a management position in your company, actually read what they sent you!

They probably sent you some materials about themselves, or whatever, and we've all been in interviews where it's been so obvious that what we sent to the person in advance was never looked at. And that's a little frustrating, and it doesn't give you much confidence in the person who is doing the interview.

So I think just basic preparation gets you way, way farther down the road to having a good human interaction, that gets beyond the clichés and gets beyond the surface.

Rachel Salaman: You also stress the need to plan the structure of interviews, so this is what order the questions should go in. What kinds of things should we ask ourselves when we're putting our questions in order?

Dean Nelson: Yes, this is an area of great disagreement among interviewers. There are some who just want to improvise: a person walks into an office, or you meet at a pub, or a coffee shop, and you just – as we say in the States – "wing it."

I think that's dangerous because you have a limited amount of time, you don't know exactly how this is going to go, you don't know if the other person you're talking to can improvise as well as you – so I put a lot of stock in preparing questions and writing them out.

That doesn't mean I'm always looking at my questions, but it means I'm familiar enough with the territory that I want to get into, that I know there are some things we are going to cover. But I also know that they have to be put in a kind of an order, so that the person feels at ease and comfortable with you at the beginning, so that if there are some more difficult questions that you have to ask later on, that they trust you and that they feel safe in this conversation.

So, for example, if I know that somebody had maybe a run-in with the police somewhere along the line in his or her career, I'm not going to start there in my interview, but I will get there.

I think those are the kinds of questions you would not start with, but I typically place them about maybe two-thirds of the way into an interview. But having a plan for how you get there, and some steps along the way, I think will save you a lot of trouble.

Rachel Salaman: How helpful is it to approach any difficult conversation as if it's an interview, and apply some of the techniques we've been talking about?

Dean Nelson: I think when you're having a difficult conversation with a family member, or a neighbor, or something, I would not approach it the way I've just been describing doing interviews. For this reason – it would seem a little manipulative.

So, if I'm suspecting that my teenage son is doing something I don't think he should be, I think having a warm-up kind of question or two (maybe a kind of contrived time together so that we can finally get to the heart of it), he's going to see through that.

So I think it's just better to get to the confrontation sooner than later and just say, "Hey, can we talk about what happened last night when you came home?" I would get right to it that way. And I've actually done that with co-workers where I've been in conflict with them (rather than warm up to it and pretend that everything is fine) and then we kind of zero in on it.

I would rather get right to the conflict. And I think the co-worker respects that, and they know it's coming anyway. If you've got some hard action to take with an employee, get the person in some sort of a safe atmosphere and say "Hey, we've got to talk about what happened the other day and here's the action we're taking." So, I would not warm up to it, I would get right after it.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk about the questions themselves now, and you make the point in your book that you'll get a different answer to a question depending on how you frame it. So, what are some successful ways to frame a question?

Dean Nelson: I think questions that begin with "why" and "how" are always going to be better than "when" and "where," for instance. So you want to ask what I would call open-ended questions. Questions that will direct the person into giving a longer explanation, as opposed to a fact.

If you were to ask me, for instance, about my childhood, and you were to say, "Now, you were born in Chicago, correct?" And that's a closed-ended question. The answer to that question is, "Yes." And if I'm not really interested in taking that question any further, I'm just going to answer with a simple yes.

Let's say you're interviewing me, and instead of saying, "You were born in Chicago, right?" What if you were to say, "What are the differences you've seen in Chicago in your years since you were born there?" Now that's an open-ended question. That's going to draw out more of an analysis of some memory, of some history.

Now let me give you the converse of that, which is you can ask a question that is so open-ended that it's just paralyzing. So, I'll give you an example: my father was in World War II, and he was on a weather station on the Arctic Circle. So he and a bunch of other soldiers were just up there for a year giving hourly weather reports.

If you want to just absolutely paralyze him with a question, and ask him what was it like being on the Arctic Circle for a year, he would just "hum and haw" and stutter. How do you answer a question of what was it like? Well, the answer to that question is, it's not like anything.

So you have to ask that question differently. So you would have to ask that question more along the line of, "What did you do for food while you were on the Arctic Circle for a year? What kind of contact did you have with the US, or with family, or whatever, while you were on the Arctic Circle? Did you interact with any of the indigenous people there? What were those interactions like?"

But to ask such a broad question, that's like asking someone after they win the World Cup, "What's it like to win the World Cup?" Well the answer is, it's not like anything. You have to ask a better question than that.

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Rachel Salaman: You also bring out the importance of silence in interviews, could you talk a little bit about that?

Dean Nelson: I think people who are not used to conducting interviews are afraid of silence, and they think that they're just wasting the person's time, or that it's a sign of a bad interview, or something, if there's much silence.

But, unless it's televised (or unless it's on a podcast, like this), I consider silence part of the grammar of an interview. Maybe the person is trying to think of something, or maybe the person is trying to collect an emotion or remember something.

So if you ask a question and the person really has to ponder a little bit, that's OK. Silence is OK. I think you're actually respecting the person and respecting the interview if you allow some silence.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and I think we have a natural tendency to fill silence, so it's much better that the interviewee, in whatever situation, does that filling rather than the interviewer, because you're going to get a richer interview that way.

Dean Nelson: It's a new person's mistake to feel that you always have to rush in and fill the silence. Don't do it. Let it just be there for a little while, and I think you're going to get something good if you let the silence remain.

Rachel Salaman: And what difference do you think our body language as interviewers makes to the answers that people give us?

Dean Nelson: Body language is very important. If you're the interviewer, and the person that you're interviewing is telling you something and you're looking out the window, or you're looking at your phone, or you're looking at your computer monitor, picking your fingernails, or whatever, you're communicating that you're bored.

You may not be, but that's the signal you're giving. I think leaning forward when you talk to somebody is an invitation into being more personal. I think raising your eyebrows to show surprise, laughing, gesturing with your hands – I use my hands a lot when I'm interviewing somebody, and I think that's just a sign that I'm engaged.

So many people – again, these are people who maybe haven't done it very much – are so locked in to looking at their notes, or taking notes, or looking at what their next question is going to be, that it just signals to the person that they're interviewing that you're boring and what you're saying isn't very interesting, and that this person can't wait to get out of there.

So, paying attention to your own body language is crucial. Paying attention to the body language of the person that you're interviewing is just as crucial.

You can tell when you're into something pretty personal (and you don't have to be a PhD in psychology to figure this one out) that when the person crosses her arms or crosses his arms, crosses his legs, kind of folds in on themselves, you know you're in some territory that they're uncomfortable talking about.

That doesn't mean you need to avoid it, it just means you need to be aware that it's getting a little uncomfortable.

Rachel Salaman: Now, of course, you and I are talking via Skype now – I'm in London, you're in San Diego. What do we lose when we interview people via the internet or on the phone, and how can we make the most of interviews that are not conducted face-to-face and we can't see people's body language?

Dean Nelson: The voice to voice, like this, is better than via email, for instance, or better than a text.

What you and I are losing right now… I have no idea whether you're interested in what I'm saying. If we were looking at one another on a screen and had some video, then that would be better: I would know that what I'm saying is actually being received well, and what you're asking you can interpret a little bit of body language.

So it makes it that much more crucial that the questions you ask – if you're only getting voice to voice – that the questions you're asking are open-ended enough, so that the person is really needing to go past the surface, and give you something that he or she hasn't done a thousand times before.

So the pressure is really on the person conducting the interview, when you can't see one another. The questions have to be done well.

Rachel Salaman: Now you mentioned note-taking a little earlier, and capturing what interviewees say is clearly very important. In your book you advise journalists to record interviews in two ways: with a recording device and with written notes. Does that apply to non-journalistic interviews too? What are your thoughts?

Dean Nelson: I think a lot of interviews should have some notes taken.

Human resources interviews, for instance, financial planners, medical… Can you imagine going into a doctor's office and talking to a doctor about some sort of ailment, and the doctor never taking any notes, never writing anything down? And hoping that he or she got the message that you were conveying.

So, I think taking some kind of notes for most interviews is just standard practice. There are some interviews where I think recording them is crucial, and that's if you're dealing with high-profile people, public figures, people who have easy access to the court system, for instance, who might want to say that you misquoted them, or took their words out of context, or whatever.

You want to be able to have proof that you were accurate in how you portrayed that person. It's really to protect you and to protect the integrity of what it is you were talking about. But the way I take notes is, I do not write down word for word what somebody said.

Rachel Salaman: Because you don't really want to lose eye contact, do you?

Dean Nelson: No, you just look like you're transcribing, as opposed to having an interview. Again, I think that's what a lot of people who are just starting out interviewing, they think they have to write down every word the person says. All you'd be doing is writing.

I write down key phrases, primarily verbs and nouns, and if somebody says something in an unusual way or in a provocative way, or something – going back to body language, I'll hold up one hand and say, "Wait a second, I want to make sure I get that exactly the way you said it."

People will let you do that. They want you to get it right also, so they're OK with you writing down that complete sentence. But I take these notes, and – again, what I say in the "Talk to Me" book is – soon after that interview is done, you need to go to those notes and either transcribe them or fill in on your notes the rest of those sentences, because short-term memory is pretty good, but you need to fill in the rest of those sentences so that you've got them in actual sentences, not just the nouns and verbs.

If you wait a day or so to go back, and then try to use those notes and try to recreate what the person said, you've lost a lot. So, just for efficiency, I write down what I call "fragments" and then I fill it in (maybe as soon as I get to my car, or step into another room, or something like that) soon after the interview, and fill in the rest of it.

Rachel Salaman: Now, the tips that you've been sharing with us and in your book, they're all from the interviewer's side. What about from the other side, what's a good way to prepare for being interviewed, have you got any tips for that?

Dean Nelson: That's a great question. If you're going into an interview, let's say it's a job interview, and you don't know very much about that organization, then you've just made the same mistake that the person interviewing you would be making if he or she wasn't prepared by talking to you.

You should know something about that organization that you're interviewing with. You should know something about the individual who is going to be doing the interview with you.

At some point, if it's a job interview, for instance, they're going to say to you, "Do you have any questions for us?" And you'd better be ready. If you don't have any questions for the organization that you're trying to get a job with that's just going to show a lack of preparation, a lack of curiosity.

And so I think having some good [questions] – and you don't need a lot, you just need one or two – about either the company's success, or about a restart of a product, or something where they've been in the news, I think being ready to engage the conversation at that level, I think that would be very important.

Rachel Salaman: Do you have one final piece of advice for people who may be daunted by the prospect of conducting interviews to help them feel more confident and get better results?

Dean Nelson: I think the best advice I would have for anybody conducting an interview is to be your authentic self. So if you are awkward or uncomfortable, just be awkward and uncomfortable, don't try to be somebody else, don't try to be some famous interviewer and try to just role play.

I think the more you are authentically you, as the interviewer, the more that frees up the person you're interviewing to be authentically that person's self. And so, trying to act like you're full of confidence if you're not, or trying to act like you have all the answers when you don't, then that's just ultimately going to backfire and it's going to set up an atmosphere of falsehood.

I just think the best interviewers are the ones who sometimes are awkward and yet they know where it's going, they've done their preparation, but they don't have to be slick and professional and smooth.

I'll give you one example of how this worked where somebody who came to the door of my house. People stop by my house all the time and try to sell solar panels, or try to sell landscaping equipment, or want to paint your house, or whatever. I was home writing one day and there was a knock on my door. And if I'm writing I usually ignore the knocks, but there was something about this one that just made me get up and look to see who was there.

It was just a young boy, I would guess 10 or 11 years old, and he was standing at my front door and he had a little case of something with him. And so I opened up the door, and he's dressed awkwardly, he's awkward, and he's just kind of stammering, but the first thing he says is, "I'm going to try to sell you something."

He was so awkward, and so authentic, and so real and raw, that I didn't care what he was selling, I was going to buy it. I was so taken with his authenticity that I was completely engaged with him from the very beginning.

So, I think that kind of advice could go to any good interviewer, anybody who's just getting started, anybody who just feels awkward and tense and feeling like a fraud for conducting this interview – just be your authentic self, own it. And I think the other person is going to respect you and trust you as a result.

Rachel Salaman: Dean Nelson, thanks very much for joining us today.

Dean Nelson: My pleasure, it was fun talking with you today.

The name of Dean's book again is, "Talk to Me: How to Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Like a Pro."

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.