Stephanie is the director of content at Rebrandly. Before that, she spent several years in B2B tech content marketing agencies working her way from marketing specialist to director of client services. Stephanie started her career as a travel blogger, documenting her adventures for nearly a decade at Why Wait to See the World.

The following has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to/watch the full interview on the Interviewist YouTube channel.

Sarah: How are you involved with interviewing these days?

Stephanie Yoder: Currently, I'm the director of content for a small SaaS company…I write content, edit, and oversee a writer. I probably do a couple of technical interviews a month, and then I like to sit in on the interviews my writer does, mostly so I can continue to learn about our product and get more context. Most of the people I talk to these days are in-house engineers, C-suite people.

How you would describe your interviewing style or approach?

Probably similar to my approach to everything, which is pretty laid back. I like interviews that are conversational and open-ended. I find it’s a lot more productive and enjoyable than just going in with a set objective and a strict list of questions. 

Good content has value for the reader. It's not just reiterating product points for the company that's producing it. So it's important during interviews to root around and find that “why” beneath the information to make that connection for the reader on why this matters to them.

How do you prepare for interviews with your more laid-back approach?

It helps when you put together questions to look at them as a roadmap to the interview, as opposed to, “I must get answers to each of these things to complete my objectives.”

Do you feel your experience as a travel blogger impacted your approach to interviewing? Or content creation, for that matter?

When I used to write about my travel adventures, I would always remind myself: Nobody really cares about me personally and the things I do, they care about it as it relates to them. So either it has to be entertaining, or it has to be educational, or it has to be inspirational—and I think that's true of any piece of content you create in any capacity. 

After I was a blogger, I worked for two years as a ghostwriter—I helped CEOs, academics, and others write full-length books. I wrote on a whole bunch of different subjects, from the rise of AI to starting a legal cannabis dispensary. They were full books, so that's a lot of content to get out of a person. We would usually do it over the course of four or five, two-hour interviews. 

That really set me up to do interviews in the context of content marketing. I really had to start thinking about tactics for getting the most useful information out of a person and getting them to really spill their guts.

You’ve worked in travel blogging, ghostwriting, content marketing, B2C, B2B, etc. Has your approach to interviewing changed as you’ve changed industries and roles?

Yes and no, because on one level, people are just people, no matter what context you're approaching them in. And talking to people is a skill that has sort of the same prerequisites no matter what.

But one thing that I've had to learn in B2B tech is the importance of job titles and roles. Knowledge in tech companies is much more segmented. Not everyone knows everything about a product or how a business works. There's a lot of prep work that goes into understanding how the person you're speaking to fits into their organization and the subjects they're actually likely to know about and provide value on. 

I think people generally want to be helpful. You just have to give them that path and make them feel like they are being helpful, and then they really open up.

You've managed and coached several writers throughout your career. What are some patterns you’ve noticed with less experienced or newer interviewers?

Confidence is the big thing. Junior interviewers are usually really nervous, and that can make them very abrupt in how they ask questions. It often feels like they are just going down a checklist of questions. And I think when an interviewer is really nervous, subjects can sense that, and it really affects the tenor of the interview and the amount of value you're going to get out of it.

Another thing that I often find missing is the ability to think strategically about what is going to make that piece of content compelling. And again, it goes back to the mindset of, “I’ve got to get these pieces of information to fill out my piece. Check, check, check.” 

Whereas, when you are more relaxed, you can take that step back and think about: “Okay, that was interesting. Maybe readers would like to hear more about this,” versus just, “This is what I've been assigned to do.”

What other tips, tricks, or advice do you have around coaching and teaching interviewing?

I like to have new interviewers sit in and observe on a couple of calls first. So I'm going to interview this person, and you're just going to watch. Then, we'll have you run an interview, but I'll stay there as backup support in case you need me. Then, after one or two of those calls, it's like, okay, you can do this now. And almost always they can.

Do you have any other underrated interviewing tips?

Embrace awkward silences. People hate silence so much. And if you are willing to play chicken and be the person who pauses, they will fill up that space. And oftentimes, they'll spit out the most interesting things at that point.

My last tip is always record everything. Don't bother taking notes in real-time. It's distracting. You're going to miss stuff. You can't catch everything anyway, just record and go back later. 

I actually have been really liking Fathom as a tool for doing that, because it uses AI to synthesize all the main points, and then it kind of creates a table of contents…So it's really easy to go back and look through your transcript.

When I used to do subject matter interviews, I would print out the transcripts, and then I would take a highlighter and I would physically highlight every important point, which is not a bad way to do it, but it is really time consuming. So if AI can pick out those major points and sort through all the ums and ahs—that’s so useful.

🎤 

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