Imagine you are able to bring Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, or Warren Buffet to your show. What would you like to ask these personalities? Not to worry, we’ve selected the best interview questions to ask your guest.
If you run an interview-style podcast, you’ll know it’s hard work coming up with engaging, interesting, and unique questions. Your podcast listeners are always in need of fresh, intriguing, and hard-hitting questions. It’s the adeptness of your interview questions that brings the real deal out of your amazing podcast guests.
As you get ready for 2022, we want to help you change the direction of your podcast questions and improve the popularity of your podcast. It’s about asking the questions to elicit a response that the listeners want to hear. These questions should guide the scripting of your podcast.
In this post, we’ll be giving you ideas about the 7 Best Interview Questions that give your guest shortness of breath and your listeners a swell time hearing the response.
1. One Thing You Wished You Were Aware Of When You Started Your Career
As a podcaster, while preparing your interview questions, it is essential to understand why your listeners are interested in that particular guest and not only think about your guest. And most of the time, the podcast audience tends to listen to the guest because they are in the same field or aspire to be like them.
In a nutshell, this question gives value by providing an overview of what a successful person in that career line wishes to have known at the inception.
2. What Are Your Greatest Failure? And What Did You Learn From It
People adore success without paying attention to the hurdles, hardships, or obstacles that people go through in the journey of success before attaining a level of greatness.
In other words, this kind of question can make your guests share things they usually don’t discuss daily and give your listeners a view of their failures; it encourages them when they are weak and susceptible and creates a chance to connect more deeply with them the guest.
Immediately you notice that your guest sounds more accommodating and open to answering hidden questions; try to ask them what setbacks or failures they have experienced in the previous years and how they tackled them. It may be a disappointment that may have led to losses financially or might even be worse in some cases, and the point is to try to ask them, so your listeners can learn from their mistakes and take precautions when necessary.
3. What Advice Will You Give To Anyone Aspiring To Choose Your Career Path
Listeners are very interested in questions like this because the previous questions are kept in mind by both the audience and guests, but this particular question addresses the audience directly. This type of interview question is a high-value one that mostly results in a good sound bite and great content.
Usually, people who have achieved success would like to create a path for other people to follow. This set of interviews creates an avenue for your guest to share their knowledge with the newbies aspiring to be like them.
4. How Do You Improve Your Learning Skill To Stay On Top
How do they continue to stay at the top of their various fields? Is it that they sit and rely on previous knowledge? Or are they engaging themselves in more research that will further boost their relevance? Do they get the latest information on various articles that are published daily through browsing?
Maybe your guest attends extra classes, seminars, or conferences to stay at the top of their dynamic field. Irrespective of them having a college degree, however, the case may seem you won’t know until you ask. These questions will be beneficial to your listeners to get some ideas and learn about the career they may be interested in.
5. If You Had An Extra Cash Budget, How Would You Spend It? And Why?
Assuming you are in the guest’s shoes, and let’s say you run out of cash from the budget you had initially made, would you use an extra fund to ensure smooth running? In the production process, development on something different, knowing that budget presents a lot of challenges both to the owners and the project in general?.
Moreover, your guest might be from a financially balanced background, or maybe he has investors backing. Nevertheless, an extra fund can play a significant role. Conversely, imagine a guest is struggling with a budget because of fewer funds; how would they respond to this type of question?
However, this question may leave the person being interviewed in deep thought and for your audience, it’s about learning more.
6. What Surprises Have You Had In Recent Times
Suppose your guest is engaged in a project, a digital gadget, or any other technological innovation. In that case, it creates an opportunity to embed a unique feature that will spice up the project and give the audience a wonderful experience.
Furthermore, your guest’s responses will enlighten you and your listeners on the type of surprises he has encountered and what makes them focus and passionate in their field.
7. How And Where Can The Audience Reach Out To You
This part tells your podcast listeners where and how to reach your guest for further questioning and mentorship, whereby the guest has the opportunity to connect their platforms such as the social media pages, blog, and website so that the audience will follow their favorite guest and the guest will, in turn, be grateful to them for promoting their pages.
Final Thought
You are not making the most of your guest’s wealth of knowledge, expertise and experience if you fail in asking the important questions. That’s to also say that you are shortchanging your podcast listeners if you fail in putting your guests on the hot seat. You should aim to build on these 7 best interview questions to ask your guest, and you’ll see your podcast breaking limits.
As a podcaster, you know what you have been through to make sure you have the guests, knowing fully well that they have something relevant to impact your listeners, so choosing the right questions to ask is essential.
