Interview Blitz Reflections
Stephen Bailey
Back when an extracurricular Zoom call was considered a novel and interesting diversion, I was inspired to go on a two week blitz of interviews with folks I hadnt spoken with in a while, or in some cases, ever.
It was a test of remote networking, and whetehr the informal “Penny Chat” could thrive in a boundary-free world. Over two weeks, I conducted 7 such chats, each of which followed an interview format with the following characteristics:
- Publicly announced and Zoom link shared
- Recorded and posted on Youtube
- No pre-decided topic
- About 30 minutes long
I chose this format because I anticipate if Penny U were to “scale” someday, it would need a formula of sorts to make sure that the content of chats remain high. One of the problems we see with platforms like MeetUp is that low-quality groups and half-baked ideas proliferate – when you go to a group, even one with hundreds of members, your first question is: is this really a thing?
The interview format circumvents the ambiguity by reducing the list of requirements to just an interviewer, interviewee and a specific time slot. If other people join, great. If not, little value is lost. This is not the case (in my opinion) with study groups, for example, where if only two people show up, there is an awkwardness because of higher expectations.
Some observations
I solicited interviews from a few folks I knew, and from a wild Slack spree I held after too much coffee. I am deeply grateful for their time, and enjoyed each chat. A few observations on the format below:
I did not find recording the chats to be unnatural. I felt some hesitancy initially – there is a bit of “on the spot” feeling when clicking the Record button. But it turns out to be the same feeling as hitting send on a Tweet or publishing a blog post.
A challenge to the Interview format was with the people that I knew best and wanted to catch up with, such as Mary van Valkenberg. Although the conversation was great, the format did feel artifical, and I would have enjoyed more personal discussion. In contrast, with people I didnt know, the interview format felt more natural.
Announcing the chats on Slack, LinkedIn amnd Twitter was a little tedious. It would be great to having a central Penny U calendar of scheduled chats that I could “share”.
Having a recording is outstanding after the fact. I had seven meetings, and I have seven recorded artifacts, connected to my personal account, of me conducting those meetings. From a Penny U perspective, this is gold – we have dates, attendees, topics, user views, transcripts, video. Lots of potential for understanding and evangelizing our community better.
Pain Points
Although I enjoyed every single converation I had, I did not enjoy the before and after tasks. Even though scheduling for two people was not difficult, there was a lot of repetition that happened in quick succession.
- Find an interviewee
- Schedule a time
- Create event summary, Zoom info and share with guest
- Post to Slack, Twitter, etc.
- Brainstorm topics of conversation and preparing for the Interview
Afterwards, there was clean-up:
- Upload recording to Youtube and create a summary post
- Update Slack, Twitter, LinkedIn with Youtube link
- Jot down notes on what was great about the chat
- Send a thank you message (I was not good about this)
I want to note how similar this feels to a podcast – but an informal podcast. A notable difference is that there is no editing required, which is a huge time saver. You could imagine the Penny U website archiving and simplifying some of these steps – creating shareable materials and a public history of Penny Chats, like a real-life version of Stack Overflow history.
Takeaways
I wrote elsewhere some initial thoughts on chat patterns, and here I test-drove the interview. I think it is a strong contender as the fundamental virtual Penny Chat pattern, because it has few dependencies, provides a lot of control to the organizer and also bears high similarities to the familiar podcast.
It also provides the opportunity for the organizer to get better at interviewing, and the guest to get practice answering hot seat questions. These are critical professional skills, and one that career development teams across the country train people on. But here we are making it a casual, real world interview – great for practice and for learning.
