How to ask interview questions that cut through rehearsed answers. Restate a guest's complex idea concisely, then probe deeper. Connect different concepts from their work, especially ones they haven't made explicit, to signal you've done the work and push them toward real answers instead of soundbites.
What are some of the, like, kind of the questions that you ask to get past the fluff, to get to, you know, the real meat of it?
What I'm trying to do with some of the questions, if I find that I'm getting fluff, is I'll ask something that's a little bit incisive. I'll restate something that I know that that is in their work. That's a complicated concept. And I'll restate it pretty succinctly. I'll do that, and I'll ask a question based on that, and I'll do it again, and I'll connect things in their work that maybe they didn't even connect, or I'll connect things in their work that they probably connected that aren't connected by beginners. And so what? This signals one, it's interesting. It illustrates a point, keeps them engaged in the conversation. But the other thing that it does is they'll go either out loud or in their own head. They'll be like, oh, okay, this guy knows what he's talking about. I can't really keep bullshitting this guy because he knows my stuff well. And so when you show that, you get a little bit more respect from the guest, but also they realize they're not fooling you, and they're also not satisfying you with their sound bite answer, and so they have to go deeper.
