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?

Lauren: My main type of interviewing is interviewing subject matter experts around very technical, technology-driven topics for SaaS companies. 

But I also work as a journalist for a magazine called Loss Prevention, which is geared towards loss prevention and asset protection professionals at major retailers. That's more straight journalistic interviewing, where I might interview a police detective for one story, or someone at Target or Ulta for another, or a government official.

I also work for AdAge's Custom Content Studio, which is sort of a hybrid of my content marketing and my journalism skills because they're clients who are paying for these pieces to get published on AdAge, but I still have to interview them. They usually provide key topics and bullets they want to hit, but I'm still tasked with coming up with the questions and ultimately leading the interview.

What do you consider your interviewing superpower?

I feel like we can all find one thing in common with everyone we meet, no matter how different we are, our backgrounds—we're all human beings. We all have a certain set of shared experiences.

So I try to mine for that gem in either my background research or during the flow of the conversation. Even if it's just like, “Hey, we know 10 of the same people on LinkedIn,” or “Hey, you went to college in Philly like I did,” or, “You spent some time in somewhere I've lived.” I think that does help relax subjects. You come at it as: This is a conversation, it's not an interrogation. 

You've been interviewing for roughly 20 years, and interviewing, especially the past two years, has really changed. Walk me through how your approach has evolved over that time. 

When I started feels like a completely different world. It was actually the summer of 2001, so it really was a different world because it was just before 9/11. 

I was an English major. I knew I wanted to write, but I didn't know what type of writing. I literally went in the phone book, because that's how long ago this was, and looked up numbers for all the different small community newspapers. One of the small papers in my community was like, we'll pay you $25 per story, let's try you out. I had no idea what I was doing. 

Everything was in person. I had to go to events, meet people in person. Some things were over the phone. I had my notepad and my little pen, and I'm just trying to fervently take notes. I was so green, lacking confidence at the time, that I stuck to basic questions. I did not probe much beyond the surface, and I really didn't need to for this particular paper or role. I was really out on my own—but that was a forcing function to get my feet wet, get over being nervous, have some of those awkward interviews and moments, and then move on from there. 

By my senior year of college, I was freelancing for a paper in Philly. After four years of college and learning how to meet and work with different people, I was much more comfortable talking to people. I knew how to build rapport. I was very young, so some of my editors and sources also took me under their wing. At that point, I was being nurtured, finally, in how to interview, how to be a journalist, how to be a writer, how to be a reporter. 

There's so much that's changed. It's so much less in person. There's so much more research and preparation you can do, which makes the interviews and the conversations far less awkward because you can be so well prepared. 

What are your thoughts on the shift away from in-person interviewing?

You miss some things from a body language perspective when you're doing everything online. I think, too, you could potentially probe a little deeper when you're with someone in person, especially if you do make that connection and have rapport very quickly, and they feel comfortable with you. There's this distance between us when we're on our computers. We can see each other, but it's still online, so it just feels like there's a little bit something removed sometimes.

Do you feel like people have changed in their approach to being interviewed?

I think generally with the advent of social media and PR and influencer marketing, everybody has a brand now that they need to protect. So I feel like sometimes if you listen to celebrity interviews today versus 20 years ago, they're not really giving you much depth, because everybody has a PR firm, everybody is a publicist, and because anything can be misconstrued and then disseminated out across dozens of channels and live forever. People hold back a little bit more. 

Let’s dig into your time working in Australia. Did you notice any cultural nuances that you had to adjust to when working and interviewing?

Australians are so fun. They love to have a good time, but there are nuances to their humor and to what they're willing to accept professionally. So they'll go have a boozy lunch, or there would be a beer or wine cart that came around at 4 pm every Friday. But if you told the wrong joke, or if you asked something a little off kilter or cheeky, as they like to call it, not everybody loved that. 

I struggle with that because the persona is that they're so fun, they work hard, they play hard. But there was a limit, sometimes, to my own humor and to what I could ask people, even if it was technical SMEs at Datacom.

And I think sometimes they were more comfortable with “marketing light.” They didn't want to be shouting about their name from the rooftops. They didn't want to be boastful. I found that tricky to navigate—how to ask questions the right way, while being authentic to my own personality, but not offending anyone, and getting the information I needed to produce whatever piece of content I was working on. 

How should someone moving abroad—or with a new international client— prepare for interviews?

Definitely Google what different phrases and terminology mean. Always check so you don't say a phrase or ask a question that is offensive in that culture. Read other local newspapers and online publications to see how others interview, the kind of quotes they get, the kind of points they make, the kind of questions that you can tell they asked by reading the article—to learn how far you can push and when you might need to take a pause. 

I think every country and every culture has a different limit on what they're willing to share. You know how much banter they're willing to engage in, the type of humor.

How do you envision interviewing evolving over the next few years?

As we—as consumers, humans, in our work life—continue to toggle between different technologies, channels, and devices, you will see interviewing follow suit as well. Like getting quotes over Instagram or Tiktok in a DM—being able to quickly DM a source. That's how interviewing will be as well.

There can be efficiency in that as well. If you don't have to have a 45-minute interview and you can just DM someone or text someone, why not, and get what you need? Why not? It's almost going to be like a cool little digital puzzle to get all the information you need from different people. 

Do you have a most memorable interview? 

My dad passed away when I was 16 from hepatitis C. I wound up interviewing an older gentleman who also had hepatitis C and had gotten a liver transplant. I don't actually remember what the angle of the story was beyond that, but I was told to interview this man by my editor at the newspaper in Philadelphia.

He was the loveliest grandpa of a man. I shared with him very early on about my dad, and he just warmed up immediately. We kept in touch for a couple of years after the story ran because of the relationship we had developed. He did sadly pass a couple of years after I interviewed him, but I think that was a very early example of, if I'm vulnerable upfront, then the person I'm interviewing with might feel more comfortable being vulnerable or open.

Who are your interviewing muses, inspirations, role models, mentors?

This might be a little controversial, but I did grow up with parents listening to Howard Stern. He could be raunchy, he could be controversial. Not everybody's a fan, but he's real. And I think he does try to have an actual conversation versus an interview slash interrogation.  

Terry Gross, of course, from NPR is amazing. Iconic. Former President Obama recognized her for her style of getting public figures and really important people who live these incredible lives to share their simple truth and be vulnerable. 

I really enjoy Anderson Cooper's podcast on grief that came out a couple of years ago. There is an episode he had with Stephen Colbert, who is another great interviewer, on the untimely death of his father. I remember that interview very specifically because it was about surpassing the age of your parent when they had died, which I have now actually done by one year. I've heard Anderson interview a lot, but that podcast and that specific episode really stand out to me as something very incredible.

Sounds like the common trend is people who can dig past that surface-level stuff, get into the deeper truths.

It's funny, as a culture, in one way, we are more buttoned up and about protecting brand and image, and reputation. But there are all these additional channels to express yourself on, social media or otherwise. 

I think it's good for us to all talk and be more human. To share our past and our vulnerabilities.

🎤 

Want more? Check out our full, uncut interview below.