In this final brief chapter, I will discuss the main reason for developing this work. That is, how can people become better interviewers?
Since this work has focused on a knowledge based approach, the obvious thing to conclude is that in order to become a better interviewer, a person should know more about interviewing. This is the reason for producing the Knowledge Structure Map. Making the knowledge area of interviewing explicit in this way opens it up to critical challenge and therefore provides greater opportunities for debate within the knowledge area. In particular however, people can consider the map and seek out the information that they currently don’t have. This means that the map can contribute to the growth in knowledge of interviewers. Later the map itself can be refined and improved so that the knowledge associated with interviewing becomes clearer and more accessible.
Several of the knowledge areas from the map can be thought of simply as things to generally get better at. These things will help a person in their everyday working (and even private) life. The knowledge items from the map that could fall into this category are things like ‘listening attentively’, ‘summarising’, ‘describe things’, ‘truth’, ‘evidence’ and most certainly ‘time management’. Many of these things can be improved by becoming more aware of them. For instance, try to improve listening ability by trying out techniques like constantly summarising what is being said or trying to create a story or scene about what is being said. Things like truth and evidence can also be improved by asking (in ones own mind) why something that has been said should be believed. What is the justification for such a belief or how strong is the evidence that supports this belief. It may be best to keep this as a thought exercise since you could very quickly make yourself unpopular by challenging everything that you are told by others. The thought exercise however, may make you wonder why you do believe certain things.
Another useful exercise is to try to descried things or situations that you come across and also to see how much you rely on analogy and metaphor when you do this.
This is a good thing to do but don’t interfere unless you are certain that the interference will be received positively. In casual conversation, much of the information exchanged can be repeated many times and the making of a fairly trivial point can take quite a long time. It sometimes seems that it is the talking rather than the exchange of information that is important. This may be something that is interesting to consider. Investigation can be made more objective if one tries to summarise the main points of information that was exchanged in a conversation and then consider this against the time that it took to reveal the information.
This sort of conversation can even creep into meetings. It can be, particularly with a weak chair person, that considerable meeting time is taken in the discussion of points that are completely irrelevant to the meeting objectives. Taking the effort to actively consider and possibly analyse this could have the spin off benefit that a rather lengthy and boring meeting seems to pass more quickly.
When in a meeting or interview, it is useful to remind oneself not only what the objectives of the particular interview are but in general what you believe the function of an interview is. The argument put forward in this work is that the purpose of an interview is to gather information. If you subscribe to this view then you may wish to use other terms for things that are called interviews but are not really about information gathering explicitly. For instance, in a job (so called) interview when an interviewee is placed in a deliberately stressful environment in order to see how they function in that environment, you may wish to invent a name such as ‘stress performance test’ or ‘situation response test’ rather than ‘interview’ to describe the activity. In such cases it would still be desirable to conduct an interview as defined here.
In some interviews, an interviewee may use an amusing story to make a point that is relevant and perhaps an example of the information being sought. It is often the case that the story is remembered by all parties long after the rest of the discussion has been forgotten. (Although hopefully the rest of the information has been recorded.) What is it about a story that creates something that is more memorable than simply stating a point briefly and efficiently? A story is very redundant. It seems to require much more effort to transfer than the making of a simply point. However, the information is often much easier to integrate with ones existing experiences and it is able to become part of what one already knows. It is also the case that the listener is required to create mental scenes when listening to a story and in this way become an active participant. The individual will also need to use their own experiences, memories and knowledge to help them create the imagery. This may mean that the point to be made is actually much richer than the simple statement could have been and it may be possible for the listener to use that point in a much more varied way than would have been possible with the brief statement. In other words, stories in interviews can be a bonus rather than a distraction. They can often show how information can be used in a broader sense.
One effective way to improve interviewing is for the interviewer to visualise the information being used for its eventual purpose even before it has been gathered. Visualisation may be difficult since the nature of the information will not be known in advance. This is not important for a more general visualisation or it may cause the interviewer to create more than one scene, each showing the final situation in different information cases. Visualisation of this sort may help the interviewer to maintain the focus of interviews when they become difficult to manage.
Another way to use visualisation at the start of a project or interview programme is to imagine oneself presenting the results of the project to a team of senior managers. This brings the problems of what conclusions can I draw from this and what recommendations can I make into the active phase of a project. It also means that such questions are less likely to remain unanswered, leaving the project in difficulties.
People can get better at interviewing and in general people need to. This will not come about easily and simply through the use of a training course etc. It will only happen if people want to become better at interviewing and if people really start to consider the issues connected to interviewing. People will also find a style that accommodates the things that they learn about interviewing whilst allowing these things to work with their own personality and qualities. Everyone will not interview in the same way but everyone should do it effectively.
Many of the knowledge elements attached to interviewing are the same as those that would improve normal social interaction. These may need to be coupled with qualities of thought and sensitivity and the realisation that it is not always prudent to point out everything that you know to other people. I will leave that thought there because a good interviewer will be a thoughtful person.