How to Conduct an Interview Via Email

For numerous reasons, you may find yourself considering the idea of conducting an interview via email. If you are a writer or journalist, you may prefer to use email over the phone as an interview tool, because it is much easier to copy and paste quotes from expert sources without having to worry that you got a word wrong in your notes. You may also have a time difference with the person you are hoping to interview, leading to difficulties in scheduling a phone call. In either case, it is quite easy to conduct a successful email interview--and here are some pointers.

Instructions

1. Make arrangements with the interviewee for the interview to be conducted via email. Some people are more open to email interviews than others--many prefer email since it does not require a synchronous time to be scheduled, whereas others resent email interviews because they can be more time consuming than a quick phone call. Thus, you will need to make sure that the person you are interviewing agrees in advance to the idea of doing the interview by email.

2. Craft your questions clearly and carefully to obtain the information you require. For example, if you are asking the person a question that has a yes or no answer and you want the person to offer reasons behind the answer, be sure to word the question in a way that requires an explanation rather than leaving it open for the person to simply type "yes" or "no" as the response.

3. Limit the number of questions in your email. Between three and five questions is a good number for an email interview, unless you are really looking only for single-word responses (such as if you are conducting a survey by email). If you ask more than three to five open-ended questions in an email, you are making a larger demand on the interviewee's time in crafting that many well thought out responses. If you need to ask more questions than that, consider scheduling a phone call instead or getting prior approval from the person you are interviewing to make sure that it is not a problem.

4. Be prepared to ask followup questions if the responses you receive are not clear or if you do not understand something that the interviewee writes. It is particularly important to budget time for clarifications if your email interview is for an article that you are writing on a deadline.

5. Thank the person you are interviewing for taking the time to reply to your email interview, especially if the interviewee has obviously put a lot of thought into his or her replies.

Tips & Warnings

• Note that individuals who do not express themselves well in writing may not be good candidates for email interviews. If your interviewee responds in a way that does not meet your needs, politely request a phone interview as a followup.

• It is okay to make minor edits to correct grammar mistakes when using quotes from an email interview for an article.