How to ask good interview questions

An interview is a conversation where one person has agreed to be asked things. That sounds obvious, but it explains most of what goes wrong. The interviewer treats the list of questions as the job, reads them out in order, and misses the moment when the other person says something interesting. The best interviewers prepare thoroughly and then listen as if they hadn't.

This guide covers one-on-one interviews of every kind: hiring, user research, oral history, a podcast guest, a profile. Reporting interviews have some extra rules, which are in the journalism guide.

Decide what you need to learn

Before writing a single question, finish this sentence: "After this conversation I want to understand ___." For a hiring panel it might be how the candidate handles a project that slips. For a podcast it might be why the guest left a stable career. For user research it might be the moment people give up on a form.

That sentence decides which questions earn a place. Anything that doesn't serve it can go, or move to the end if there's time.

Write open questions, then cut them down

Open questions invite an explanation. They usually start with what, how, tell me about or walk me through. Closed questions can be answered with one word, and they have their place: confirming a date, a job title, the spelling of a name. But a whole interview of closed questions produces a pile of yeses and nos and very little understanding.

Compare:

• "Did you like managing the team?" gets "Mostly, yes."
• "What surprised you about managing the team?" gets a story.

Questions about specific past events usually beat questions about opinions or hypotheticals. "Tell me about the last time a deadline slipped" is harder to answer with a rehearsed line than "How do you handle missed deadlines?" Hiring researchers have long found that structured interviews, where every candidate gets the same job-related questions and answers are scored against the same standard, predict performance better than free-form chats. The same logic applies outside hiring: consistency lets you compare answers.

Keep each question short. If it needs context, give the context in one sentence and then ask the question in a second, short sentence. Long questions get answered halfway.

Order matters

Start easy. A first question about how someone got started, or what a normal week looks like, lets them settle in and gives you a sense of how they talk. Put the most important or difficult question in the middle, once there's some rapport but before either of you is tired. End with a question that opens a door:

• "What should I have asked you that I didn't?"
• "Is there anything you expected to talk about that we haven't?"

That last pair are closed questions in form, but in practice people treat them as an invitation, and they regularly produce the best material of the session.

Follow-ups do most of the work

The prepared question gets you started. The follow-up is where you learn something. Useful ones are plain:

• "What makes you say that?"
• "What's an example?"
• "What happened next?"
• "You said it was 'complicated.' Complicated how?"

That last one is a probe. When someone uses a vague word (complicated, fine, challenging, a lot), repeat it back and ask what they mean. It shows you were listening and gets past the summary to the specifics.

Silence is also a follow-up. When an answer seems to stop early, wait two or three seconds before speaking. People often fill the gap with the thing they nearly didn't say.

Habits that shut people down

Leading questions tell the person what answer you expect. "You must have been frustrated when the funding fell through?" will usually get agreement, whether or not frustration was the main feeling. "How did you react when the funding fell through?" leaves the answer to them.

Double-barreled questions ask two things at once: "What did you learn at your last job and why did you leave?" The person answers whichever half is easier. Ask one, then the other.

Talking too much is the most common problem of all. If you hear yourself explaining your own view for more than a sentence or two, stop and turn it into a question. You can check your draft questions for these habits with the question checker on the homepage.

After the interview

Write notes within the hour while you still remember tone and pauses. Mark the answers that surprised you; those are the ones you'll want to follow up on. If you promised to send something, or to check a fact with them before publishing, do it.