Interviewing Skills

Have you ever thought about hosting a podcast — interviewing people for a listening audience? Or maybe you’re curious about family history, but haven’t screwed up the courage to interview that one relative who seems to know everything worth knowing. Or you might have a job where you interview prospective employees and would like to get better at it.

Rose Buckner can teach you specific tools that will
make you an effective interviewer!

Rose Buckner can teach you specific tools that will make you an effective interviewer!

A strong interviewer can make the process look effortless. But an effective interview requires lots of preparation. Coming up with a strong list of questions is part of it. But you can have the most insightful questions in the world, and if you don’t know how to put the interviewee at ease, then those brilliant questions won’t help you. That’s where “inner preparation” comes in.

“Inner preparation” starts with the interviewer evaluating her own energy: “What kind of energy am I bringing into this interview today, at this moment?” Since like attracts like, if you’re feeling lethargic, that affects the interview. If you’re closed off, that affects the interview. Rose will teach you simple, practical tools to ground your energy and shift into a state of open-heartedness and calm that sets the stage for an enjoyable, open-hearted interview.

Rose started interviewing people when she was eight, after her family moved to a new town. Being young, and living in a time very different from 2023, she went around the neighborhood knocking on people’s doors and introducing herself. Overall, the folks who answered the door were “old” – between 70 and 90. Seeing Rose’s naturally curly hair ( a big crowd pleaser with the older generation), her genuine interest in people, and stunned that anyone – let alone a young person – had any interest in getting to know them, they invited her in for conversation, and sometimes cookies!

Mrs. C. was around 90, and rarely went out. Her resting face was a scowl which terrified the neighborhood kids. So nobody really knew her. It turns out Mrs. C had a world class rose garden in her backyard. When she wasn’t showing off her roses, Mrs. C regaled Rose with stories of New York theater “in the day.” Rose’s heart beat fast when she brought out her collection of playbills from….gasp…Broadway!! Pretty exciting for a budding young actress.

Rose then had the inspiration to start a neighborhood newspaper (5 cents per issue). Her mother created a hectograph: a pan filled with a green gel-like substance which they used for a printing press. Each issue came out on Wednesdays. One neighbor, Mr. H, stood on his porch on Wednesday afternoons, waiting for delivery. Rose interviewed the O. family about their trip to London. She interviewed Miss B. about her car battery getting stolen. She interviewed Mr. and Mrs. K. about their grandchildren coming for a visit. People loved learning what was going on at the other end of their street!

Later Rose’s interviews took on weightier proportions. She interviewed an African American veteran who was instructed to go into ground zero in one of the very first nuclear tests. Afterward, he had serious, ongoing health problems that the government said were unrelated. Then she interviewed a man in his ‘80’s with a white beard who looked like Col. Sanders. (They later became great friends.) She asked him to name the most important invention of the 20th century. Rose expected an answer like “space travel” or ”jazz,” but he answered “plastic,” since for the first time food could be refrigerated.

That’s when Rose discovered that no matter how much preparation you do for an interview (and you always do the preparation) often the real fun comes in the surprises. And there are always surprises.

Rose can teach you how to pivot and go with the gift of surprises!

In addition to people considered “old,” Rose interviewed quite a few young people in their teens who were in prison or on probation or parole. She quickly learned two things: a/ Never ask about their legal offense. They may tell you, but it’s not your place to ask; and b/ Nearly all of those young people talked about how much they loved their mothers and grandmothers. And how much they wanted to improve their own lives.

At S.A.F.E., an after-school program on Chicago’s west side, Rose and a room full of young men interviewed Anna Morrison, the chef at St. Agatha’s Parish. The young men knew Miss Morrison as the lady who stood on her porch at dusk, yelling at them to get off the streets and go home. That day they learned why she was so relentless about warning them: she had lost three children to gun violence and drug-related AIDS.

Rose has woven interviews (oral history) into arts and humanities classes, plays, feature stories, and radio programs. She created the Word Power Theater Project, which won her several awards: Peter Lisagor Journalism Award; Helen and Martin Schwartz Prize for Public Humanities in the Community; and Lawrence W. Towner Award for best Humanities Project.

When Rose’s Dad passed away in 1987, she rushed to interview all of her father’s contemporaries while they were still living. Those interviews played a critical part in creating The Reigning Belle of the Bluegrass Region, her latest one-woman show.

Whether your goal is to learn about your ancestors, do a podcast for a class project, or create a theater piece, Rose can help you make it a rich and even fun experience.