Preparing for the Interview

Contact the person you will be interviewing and introduce yourself. (Make an initial contact by email if you prefer, then follow-up with an introductory phone call.) During this introductory call,
1. Explain your purpose in terms that help the interviewee appreciate why s/he is the right person for you to talk and in terms that will likely interest the interviewee.
2. Ask them to select a challenging case or project – a part of their work that shows what they try to do – to discuss during the interview. (See "Choosing a good case".)
3. Explain that you will tape record the interview so you can transcribe the story in their own words and then write a commentary about what we can learn from it.
4. Discuss confidentiality issues. Let them know that you will send them the resulting “profile” for their review before anyone besides your instructor sees it. Let them know that the profile will not be shared with anyone else besides your professor, ever, without their explicit permission. (Make sure you abide by that agreement!)
5. Answer any questions on the process of the interviews, and assess the availability of the interviewee to check and review the transcript.
6. Schedule the interview. Agree upon its length. Profile interviews typically range from 40-90 minutes. Make sure your interviewee will be in a quiet place with few interruptions.
7. Get clear directions if you will be meeting face-to-face.
Email the “consent form” to the interviewee, using this as an opportunity to confirm, in writing, your interview arrangements and remind them of the practice story agreed upon.
Make sure you have the necessary equipment: tape recorder and audio cassettes (90- or 120-minute) or digital recorder. If conducting a phone interview, ensure that you have access to a telephone where you won’t be interrupted and the equipment to record voice over a telephone line. If you will be borrowing equipment, make sure to check with your instructor (or the relevant others) about its availability.
Practice using the equipment until you are comfortable with it.
Prepare yourself by reading some documents or a brief history of the organization/setting in which your interviewee works. You can obtain these from the interviewee directly, or see what is available on the web.
Think about what you want to ask your interviewee (See “Creating Questions”). Prepare your interview questions, arranging them so that the more challenging questions come later (but not so late that they’re lost if the interview is cut short). Have your interview questions neatly typed, in a large enough font, so that you can read them easily.
Hone your interviewing skills. Watch skilled interviewers on television. Read through the other pages on interviewing on this web site and listen to the sample interview excerpts.
If you have not done many interviews of this type before, schedule trial interviews with classmates, friends or family members so that you can practice asking questions, using the equipment, and taking notes during an interview.