Top 40 Interviewer Quotes

As an interviewer, I don’t think you can dance around the subject. Certainly the interview subject knows if you are dancing, and the viewer knows that you are dancing. If it’s a hard question, you just have to ask it.

Most often, qualifications are defined by the credentials of the person who last held the job. If that is to continue to be the litmus test, white males will continue to be the top choice on any list, if the interviewer is also a white male.

It’s difficult to find a genuine weakness that makes you appear competent. For instance, telling your interviewer that your weakness is working so hard that you have trouble prioritizing your family life is a little too cliche and comes across as disingenuous.

Frost was no match for Nixon – far from being an intrepid and challenging interviewer, he was a pushover for the great and the famous, always deeply impressed with the fact that here he was, David Frost, putting questions to – Richard Nixon!

Sometimes an interviewer will look at me and say, ‘You’re bright!’ They’re actually surprised I might be bright.

A lot of times the interview relies not so much on the interviewee, but on the interviewer.

I don’t pretend to be a great interviewer; I don’t even pretend to be good at my job.

I’ve done a lot of interviews of the last few years, and I’ve actually started a list of questions that it would be fun to ask an author, but no respectable interviewer would ever ask. Since I’m not respectable, I’m going to start doing interviews with some authors I know, just for fun.

The most powerful way to convince the interviewer that you can do the job is to show how much you already know about the industry, the company, and the products/services of the company. In other words, enchant the interviewer with how much you already know.

How did this or that change my music? The only time I have to think about it is when an interviewer asks me that.

‘Waiting For Guffman’ was different right away from ‘Spinal Tap,’ because we didn’t show the interviewer. That person became invisible immediately. That created a different way of tuning it and ultimately editing it.

It must be quite rare for an interviewer to be interviewed.

It’s kind of a shame that it’s even an issue. Not being gay, I can’t fully appreciate how complicated that is. In the article, the interviewer asked me, and I said that if I were, I would just say it.

Find out if your radio interviewer has read your book, or you are going to have to do that part of the job on air. It’s okay if they haven’t, but it’s always better to be prepared for what’s coming.

I’m not a good interviewer.

There are just so many brilliant voices out there. I’m not the funniest person out there, I’m not the best interviewer. I’m not the best at anything, but I really just am a big fan of everyone. I’m really driven by trying to make sure that representation is out there.

I’m not a journalist; I’m probably a horrible interviewer. The one small thing I have is I’m curious, and I’m interested in who I’m with.

I think I have got a lot better as an interviewer. I let people talk now which is something you need to do. At the beginning I thought jokes, jokes, jokes, I am a stand up comedian but I think I have mellowed out now.

Oprah Winfrey is a big role model for me from a business capacity and a creative capacity. She is an incredible interviewer who cultivated a certain style by inserting her own personhood into a show on national television at a time when no one was talking about empowerment, spirituality, or our inner lives.

Oprah has this intense curiosity that I haven’t found with any interviewer.

Just as someone who’s been interested in radio and programming for so long, I can usually tell when an interviewer is doing a segment just to fill a programming slot. They ask questions, but they don’t care about the answers.

‘Tell me about yourself.’ When interviewers ask this, they don’t want to hear about everything that has happened in your life; the interviewer’s objective is to see how you respond to this vague yet personal question.

I’ve always thought if I could pick my interviewer, it’d be Charlie Rose, who I think is the best.

The first year I was on the show, it took an interviewer about 45 minutes to get it out of me that I even had a dog, and even then I wouldn’t tell him the dog’s name.

I have a hard time with interviews, because I’d rather hear about the interviewer.

I think it is quite untrue that it is standard journalistic practice to name the interviewer when quoting from an interview.

What I always tell people about Trump, or Kellyanne Conway, or Sarah Sanders, is that when you are interviewing these people, it is really more about the interviewer than the interviewee. What I mean by that is that the interviewer has to be ready to interrupt, fact-check, challenge, rebut.

I was a standup comic, which doesn’t necessarily mean you interact with people all that much. In fact when I did shows, I wouldn’t talk to the audience very much. Then my friend offered me a radio show, and I thought, you know, I’ll try talking to people and see what kind of interviewer I was.

The CEO of AT&T told an interviewer back in 2005 that he wanted to introduce a new business model to the Internet: charging companies like Google and Yahoo! to reliably reach Internet users on the AT&T network.

As an artist, sometimes you’d rather not do the interview. You might feel the interviewer isn’t educated on you… or what you’re about.

In an interview, I lose control even of what I am, for it is the interviewer who edits me, finally, into what he thinks I am, and never have I been happy with someone else’s version of my life after that person has spent an entire two or three hours fathoming it.

Interviews are vital, but you cannot allow an interviewer to take your life and disturb it.

I’m not an interviewer. I have conversations.

Hillary Clinton has spent her entire career looking bug-eyed with incredulity when an interviewer asks her whatever question she most expects at that moment.

One interviewer asked me: ‘How do you feel that you’ve betrayed your father?’ That wasn’t really very cool.

Offbeat questions are nearly impossible to prepare for, and they don’t achieve the interviewer’s objective – to test out-of-the-box thinking and the ability to perform under pressure. That’s the bad news. The good news is that companies are moving away from them.

I’m not a go-in-for-the-kill kind of interviewer. It’s a great thing to me, that kind of interviewer, but I’m not it. It doesn’t play to my strengths at all. I like to interview people who are interested in telling their story and tell it as truthfully as they can.

I’m a terrible interviewer. I’m not a journalist – although I have a Peabody Award – and I’m not really a late-night host. What I am is honest.

I’m not a natural storyteller at all. If anything, I’m a natural interviewer, a natural listener, but I’m not a natural storyteller.

The key to being a good interviewer is to listen, no matter how heinous the act that person has committed, you have to listen to them and ask the right questions to get the truth out.