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March 21, 2008
tips for student interviewers
Students often seem to be required now to interview "experts" as sources for their term papers. For whatever reason, I get several interview requests each week from students who are not enrolled at my university. I am generally inclined to help them, but I've developed some tips that other interview targets might want to borrow, and professors might want to recommend to their students:
Don't tell me that you want to interview me because you need several sources for a required paper. Tell me that you are interested in an important topic and want to talk to me because I seem to know something about it.
Before you contact me, read at least some of the most prominently posted material on my organization's website. I will help you to navigate through our site, but I want you to look first. Ideally, your questions will be prompted by something that my colleagues or I have written or said.
Send me the questions by email so that I can respond right away and don't have to email you back to schedule a time for a call.
Be polite. For example, "thank you" is considered a nice ending to an email. (Email, btw, is an old-fashioned alternative to texting.)
March 21, 2008 8:10 AM | category: none