Interview questions and outlines

What this is

This is a written preparation pack for a recorded conversation: the questions, the order to ask them in, how long to spend on each, and the follow-ups to have ready when an answer comes back short. It is handed over before the recording, and somebody on your side does the interviewing.

It is not the interview itself. If you would rather a stranger asked your clients the awkward questions, that is customer interviews, where I make the calls and hand you the recordings and the findings. It is also not the written-up result: an interview turned into a publishable piece is an expert interview, which starts after the recording exists. This is the preparation on its own, for when you or your host will be in the chair.

When you need one

You need it when the interview matters and cannot be repeated. A customer who has agreed to forty-five minutes will not agree to a second forty-five because the first one wandered. A retiring founder, a guest who is hard to book, a specialist who fits you in between jobs: one attempt, and the questions decide the result.

It also suits a host who is good in conversation and keeps producing recordings nobody can use. That is common and fixable. Warm, likeable interviews full of agreement produce nothing to quote, because nobody was asked anything specific.

You do not need this for a conversation you have had many times, or for a show with a settled format where only the subjects change. If what you want is the structure of a whole episode rather than the questions inside it, that is an episode outline, and it is the better buy.

What goes in the pack

The difference between a usable interview and an unusable one is almost entirely the questions. Not the microphone, not the room, not how charming the host is. A recording made with good questions is worth editing even when the sound is poor; one made with vague questions cannot be rescued by anything.

• The opening. Two or three easy, factual questions whose only job is to get the person talking in full sentences before anything difficult is asked.
• The main questions. Usually eight to twelve, each about one specific thing that happened rather than a general opinion. What did you try first is a question; what are your thoughts on the sector is not.
• The running order. Which question goes where and roughly how many minutes it should take, so the person in the chair knows at twenty minutes whether they are behind.
• The follow-ups. For each main question, the two or three prompts to have ready when the first answer is a sentence long. This is the part people skip, and where the quotable material comes from.
• The one question that must be asked. Marked at the top. If the conversation runs away, this is the one asked before the recording ends.

Questions are also written to be said out loud. Writing for the ear is not writing for the page: a question that reads well on paper often sounds like an interrogation when spoken, or runs so long that the person has forgotten the start of it. Anything that cannot be asked in one breath gets rewritten.

What you get

The interviewer's sheet. One page, formatted for reading aloud, with the questions in order, timings marked beside each, and the follow-ups indented underneath. Large enough to read at a glance during a recording.

The full pack. The longer document behind it: why each question is there, what a good answer looks like, and what to do if the person deflects. Read once before the interview and then left alone.

The guest note. A short message you can send the interviewee in advance, saying what will be covered without giving the exact wording, so they arrive prepared but not rehearsed.

A brief on the recording. Notes on how to record it so the result is usable: separate audio, one person talking at a time, and the habit of leaving a beat of silence after each answer, which is where people say the thing they were not going to say.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. An engineering recruiter in London, Ontario starts a video series interviewing plant managers. The first three recordings run about fifty minutes each and produce nothing anybody can use. The guests are pleasant, and every question begins with the words how do you see.

The pack rewrites them around events instead of opinions. The last time you had to fill a maintenance role in under three weeks, what did you do first. What did the recruiter you used get wrong that time. What does a shortlist look like when it is genuinely good. Ten questions, a running order marked to forty minutes, three follow-ups under each. The must-ask question is what would make you stop using a recruiter altogether. The fourth recording produces six passages worth clipping and one answer that becomes the argument of a whole article. The host does nothing differently except read from a different sheet.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. Who is being interviewed, who is asking, what the recording is for, and what you hope to be able to say afterwards. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. One interview or a series, and whether each guest gets their own pack or all share a base set, agreed before anything starts.
3. Background. Anything you have on the interviewee, plus the three things you want the recording to prove. If it is a customer, I want to know what they bought and what nearly stopped them.
4. The draft. Two to three working days for a single interview. Read aloud and timed before it is sent.
5. Your review. The interviewer reads the sheet out loud. Any question they would not naturally ask is reworded into their own phrasing, because a borrowed question sounds borrowed.
6. Delivery. Sheet, full pack, guest note and recording brief, at least two days before you record.

What it costs

An interview pack is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because a single customer conversation and a series of twelve guest interviews are very different pieces of work. A series is usually priced as one base structure plus a smaller per-guest amount, since most of the thinking is done once. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works, and the number is agreed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Three things usually follow the recording. It gets turned into readable text, which is transcripts, and that is the raw material for everything else. A customer interview is then most valuable as a proof page, written up as an interview turned into a case study. And where the recording is an episode rather than a one-off, the page beneath it is show notes, written from the same transcript. None of that is assumed. The questions and the running order are a finished piece of work on their own, and if all you ever do with them is record a better interview, that was the point.