Law Students

Knowing When to Shut Up

By Casebook Sherpa

As part of my job I’ve done some media training. This is when an organization hires a PR firm to teach them about working with the media. Part of this is conducting mock  interviews, often on camera, to get them comfortable answering questions a reporter might ask, particularly difficult questions.

One of the tips our company gives is, “know when to shut up.” Sometimes journalists will let you answer a question and then not immediately ask a follow up. Often, the silence leads the subject to add to his previous answer. More words equal more fodder for the reporter’s story. Usually these words are not what you want to be saying. It’s not that they’re bad. It’s just that they are not the core of your message; rather, they’re color meant to explain or justify what you’ve just said. The result is sometimes the reporter uses that instead of your primary answer, which was much stronger.

This is also related to the most useful exam tip a law school professor gave me: answer the damn question. On an exam, your goal shouldn’t be to show off how much you know, but to use what you know to answer the question and then stop. It’s easy to keep adding stuff in, claiming it’s related, qualifying your conclusion ad nauseum. But if it takes you away from answering the question, it’s useless and you’re wasting time.

This thought occurred to me in reading through some interviewing tips our school put together. One of the tips they share is:

Most questions can and should be answered in a clear, concise manner. The longer you respond to a question, the more likely you are to say something you didn?t intend.

While this is buried in the “final points to remember” section, it strikes me as an important tip. If you can answer clearly and concisely you demonstrate that you know what you want to say and have no interest in boring your interviewer.

Interviewers, so the interview tips go on to say, view a successful interview as one in which the interviewer(s) talk just as much as the interviewee. All you’re doing by rambling is saying you don’t respect what your interviewer might have to add to the dialogue you’ve entered. Let the conversation evolve from your answer instead of rambling through 8 points or examples that are related to the question.

Full post as published by Fight The Hypo on August 12, 2009 (boomark / email).