tazgirl340

I am a writer for a small magazine focused on women. The goal is to find out the secrets, desires, and fun factoids of each woman and give it to our audience to read. How can I learn to ask the "scary" questions? I am afraid to insult them, upset them, scare them, etc. since I am a very private person and would think that the asker was a jerk for wanting to exploit me!

How do you do it, and do it successfully? I really need some professional advice before I lose my job! Any books/mags recommended for teaching me this?

THANK YOU

Havoc

Well I never interviewd someone, but maybe thinking and planning interviews upfront is a good idea. As a pro you are likely to do that already, but maybe go a bit deeper then just lining up the questions.
Judge the persone your gonna interview and base the questions on that persone. If its a persone thats pretty much a jabber (someone who talks your head off), then asking the right question can get you all the info you want.

Also building a small 'friendship' infront and during the interview may give you better acces to more dared questions.
In other cases you just have to dare, or ask the question propperly. Maybe call a bluff.
For instance if you want to find out if someone has had sex with someone (in the trend of 'scary questions), you could ask: Did you have sex with that persone. Or call a bluff instead and say: So, we heard you had a small... intens... relation with that persone...
Then see if the persone finnishes it off. Maybe she doesnt know what the hell your talking about and she will just tell you.

I think questions like this are just a risc no matter how you ask them. It depends on how open the persone is, and how big there sence of humor is.
Hope this helped, good luck with it

tazgirl340

Thank you for your response. Any advice is helpful!

Shaun1138

The thing with interviews is that each one is different, different place, interviewee, long or short, location etc... Here are a few bits I hope may help.

First, establish what kind of interview it is to be. Some of the people i have interviewed have requested the list of questions before the interview date; this by no means means that you can't ask any further questions, dependent on the mood of the interview. Some can turn into a horror story, but that's ok too, just move on.

Try to stay relaxed and always be polite and professional, and if you haven't done so already, confirm the length of the interview along with a brief purpose of what the interview is for i.e. profile or feature etc...

When it comes to asking the more in-depth or serious questions, you have to decide on what kind of rapport you have with the interviewee; and it's always best to try to establish a good comfortable one. Unless the whole interview is just a lead to the answer you really want.

The problem I have found when I have interviewed people is that just sometimes they are never going to be ready for that question; in which case, you pick your best moment and ask away, remembering always to be professional.

There are also the interviewees that expect awkward questions and are more than ready for it, and having as much background knowledge on your interviewee helps immensely when choosing your questions, especially the more difficult ones.

It’s the answers to the awkward questions that make the story a lot of the time, everybody wants to know the inside story on this and that; or 'did it really happen' etc..




Plan the interview well and be well prepared with background etc...
Always be polite and flexible.
Always be professional.
Do not apologise for anything that will make you look unprofessional in any way.
Always listen closely to what they say....many a follow up question has uncovered something more interesting and can change the course of the interview completely.
Always be aware of how you phrase your questions.
Try (if possible) to get reactions to certain quotes regarding them (if digging for dirt) i.e. 'Joe Dirt stated that you actually 'spent the whole night in his hotel room', is this true?'

I have, on certain occasions asked other people on what they thought about the interviewee and then used some quotes taken in the interview. This seems slightly underhanded but is actually standard practice for some interviews.



And when it comes to the difficult in-depth questions, use your best judgement. You will be surprised at how little it bothers people...they can always decline to answer; dependent on the circumstances, most interviewees will expect it.


Interviewing is such a complicated practice and can be done in many different ways and styles...find yours and develop it...practice makes perfect, as they say.

Good luck with it.

S.