Conducting interviews via e-mail

There was a time when all interviews were done face-to-face. Not any more. We are now as likely to interview someone sitting on the other side of the planet. Time zones conspire against us and, frankly, it is sometimes near impossible to get any high-ranking boss to agree to a half-hour telephone interview.

The next best thing is a feature based on answers gleaned from an e-mail exchange. But there are tricks to make sure you obtain the information you want.

How many questions?

You can't make a 500-word article out of two quotes and a "You've all done very well" statement, such as you often get out of senior managers. The answer is to ask plenty of questions.

I often start my e-mail with an apology, saying that I am sorry if the list of questions looks a little daunting, but they will help me produce a better feature that explains the role of "X" department in more depth. Nobody will object to you trying to make his or her feature better! Having said that, more than 15-20 questions and your e-mail starts to look like something from the Spanish Inquisition. Phrasing the question

In verbal interviews the secret is to use open-ended questions. But there is actually far more to it than that when it comes to using e-mail. Consider the following questions and their possible responses: Q. Was your latest advertising campaign a success? A. Yes Hm, not much use that one. OK, let's try the a different approach: Q. How successful was your latest advertising campaign? A. Very Ah! Let's try that one again wtih an open-ended question: Q. How did you measure the effectiveness of your latest advertising campaign and what did the results tell you? A. Well Steve