Interviewing Practice
This exercise is offered to tutors and learners who may wish to try a simple interviewing activity with a tutorial group. It is straight forward enough for learners to manage the activity themselves. By turning the trio into a quartet - with the fourth person being the camera crew, the exercise can be enhanced by learners videoing the activity and then evaluating the "performances".
A range of interview performance checklists can be offered to the role-players. They can indeed create their own - identifying the criteria for purposeful, systematic interviewing - and then using these to evaluate their own performance.
The task can be readily adapting into an assignment format with participants critically evaluating the skills and processes they experienced.
The Task
Your task is to interview a colleague e.g. another member of the class, to find out as much information as you can about a selected topic or experience your interviewee is aware of.
Approach
Work in a trio and together operate a round-robin with each person taking the following role in turn.
- interviewer
- interviewee
- observer (non-participant during interviews other than taking notes . Gives feedback of significant aspects of the interviews)
The trio will go through three interviews, rotating roles so that everyone has a chance to be the interviewer. (ABC, BCA, CAB)
- Pick a topic for the interview. Possible topics are:
- a job he/she did in the past
- a holiday
- his/her reaction to school, university, course etc they are doing or have done.
- a hobby
- where they lived before coming here
- the music they like
Come up with other topics.
NOW
- Prepare broad areas of questionning (avoid a long list of scripted questions) designed to find out more about the area. You might in relation to their job for example ask about:
- current priorities
- job conflicts and pressures
- what they liked/disliked
- areas of frustration/satisfaction
- things they would change if they had the chance to do them again
- factual information about their company
- future goals/plans
- changes and developments over time
- how things looked at different stages of completion
Obviously not all of these will be relevant for all topics. Think of other areas.
- Conduct the interview (approx 15 mins for a round).
- On completing an interview - de-brief. Let the interviewer themselves reflect on how the interview went, what they did, areas of improvement etc. Field these reflections and explore them together. Only then is the observer in a position to give feedback to the interviewer based on aspects of the interview and interviewer performance they "found interesting and important. ".
Possible areas of feedback are:
- how they got started
- how the interview was structured.
- the kinds of questions used - give examples and their response.
- how it flowed (or didn't)
- examples of listening and summarising behaviour.
- if they found out what they wanted. What was discovered, what was possibly missed or unnecessarily assumed.
- how much the interviewer talked - too little, too much or just right. Effect on candidate?
- who controlled the interview and how was it controlled (methods used to keep the interview on tack)
Remember to give feedback on things the interviewer did well, and not just on things which could be improved!
- Rotate roles and repeat
BOLA is developed and maintained by Chris Jarvis