My First Interview: A Reflection

In 2024, from August to November, I worked as a Writer and Journalist Intern for the non-profit organisation, The Borgen Project. As this placement was only a few months long, they market this internship as an “term long, intensive course”. At the time, this was perfect, my required hours were hit as well as gaining work experience in a field that I am interested in. During this time, I was mainly focused on researching, writing, and publishing for their blog and in some cases, their physical magazine that they publish monthly. Additionally, we were also told to email our local MPs as this was how they pass legislation in the US, create a fundraising campaign for the The Borgen Project (this was told after I was hired) and to  utilise social media to share links and resources related to their cause of global poverty alleviation. Our progress was tracked through a shared Google Document which my placement supervisor would check weekly. 

During the internship, it felt like I had been given the best opportunity for my CV, for my future career. Even before I started, I was so excited that I had secured such a perfect internship for what I needed at the time. Fully remote and flexible whilst offering 12 hours’ worth of work a week. Before applying, I researched the organisation, looked at the mostly positive Glassdoor reviews and even connected with employees on LinkedIn. When talking to other interns in different departments we all had this same perspective. Looking retrospectively at some of my fellow intern’s LinkedIn posts, some have continued to post about how much they enjoyed the experience.   

For this reflective essay, I will be using the Gibb’s Reflective Cycle as it will allow me ‘to move logically through’ [Gibbs, p.] the different stages of reflection. The ‘event’ I will be choosing to reflect on is the interview I conducted for my final article with The Borgen Project. It is important to reflect on this specific point in the internship as Gibb’s states:  

‘It is from the feelings and thoughts emerging from this reflection that generalisations or concepts can be generated. And it is generalisations which enable new situations to be tackled effectively’ 

Gibbs, P.14 

I want to reflect on this interview as it was such a pivotal moment in my placement and gave me an opportunity to attempt something I had never done before and with hope of working in journalism, interviewing skills is a needed asset. As I have never worked on a project of this scale, I knew the ‘generalisations’ that emerged from this experience would be needed for my desired career in journalism.  

Description  

The opportunity to host an interview and write an article using primary research was very new to me. I wrote about poverty in Latin America and what is being done to combat this. Due to the vastness of my article topic, I could research multiple countries and multiple poverty alleviation schemes. This topic directly relates to The Borgen Projects mission of fighting ‘extreme poverty’ through political attention, therefore, writing about this region and any ongoing poverty alleviation schemes works within their mission. This can be taken on to any future career, as any work I undertake, will have to fall within the boundaries of the business/ organisations to satisfy the ‘devoted following, keen for news around their interest’ [Holmes, P. 27].

At the start of this process, I created a pitch for my article topic. This aided me when initially looking for an interviewee. It clearly laid out the title of the article, the research I had conducted and initial ideas for questions during the interview. However, I then had to resolve the rising issue of finding an interviewee, which proved harder than expected. At first, I looked over the list of prior interviewees for The Borgen Project, but was unable find a match, so I reached out to my academic supervisor for assistance, in turn unintentionally utilising my network, an asset I would need in my desired career. This is when I was put in contact with an academic working in a Russell Group University, specialised in this subject.  

After securing the respondent, it was then time to conduct more in-depth research to relevant create questions and structure the interview. Here, I ‘[spent] as much time as [I could] to research, prepare and plan’ [Adams, P, 23], as this subject was one I was unfamiliar with. I looked at resources like The World Bank and articles about such countries with foreign aid involved. The World Bank is renowned for having clear and concise statistics of all the foreign aid supplied to different countries. I also looked at the United Nations Development Programme that recently (at the time of researching, October 2024) called an emergency conference addressing the revisitation of poverty alleviation in the region.  

A few weeks of planning later, I was ready to conduct my first interview. After emailing back and forth, we set a time to conduct the interview over teams. Before the interview started, we had a small discussion about my time at university, and how impressed the interviewee was about my success in securing an internship before telling me that it is always important to have an experience like this before graduating. This interaction, I believe, built up a rapport between interviewer and the interviewee. It is noted that ‘the easiest way to build rapport is to establish common ground’ [Adams, P. 35]. At the time of this interview, I was a student and my interviewee was a lecturer, meaning that before talking, our ‘common ground’ was the mutual background in academics which enlightened the conversation to help us further understand each other.  

As the interview commenced, the questions were flowing, and I received incredibly knowledgeable answers to aid in my final article. However, halfway through the interview I cited one my sources in a question, The World Bank, and the tone of interview shifted. In the middle of this interview, I was told that The World Bank can’t be a reliable source as it does not have the “structural understandability” of the region we were discussing. After a slight falter, I diverted the questions as to why The World Bank can’t be a reliable and then drew from previous research to construct new questions to complete the interview. In my initial panic though, I did ask where I can turn to in order to find reliable sources.  

Feelings  

When I was told the source I had derived most of my questions from was unreliable, I froze, though only momentarily, it was enough for a small internal panic to erupt from within me. A stark difference from my calm demeanour before and during the start of the interview, thanks to my prepared research. After this sudden panic, I took a few seconds of silence to recalibrate myself and immediately leant on previous research away from The World Bank in hopes of finishing the interview on a better tone. This is when a small sense of relief crept in as it was like I had unconsciously prepared research to fall back on.  

However, this mistake on my end would not have just affected myself, but also the interviewee. How would he feel about my research or questions? My first thought was that he is an academic himself, he would surely be used to students using unreliable sources, however, this interview wasn’t to do with anything academic or university affiliated: it was supposed to be a semi-professional interview. This further led me to worry about him doubting my credibility as an interviewer, or worse, that this was a waste of time. Perhaps this is seen as imposter syndrome on my end in hindsight. As the interview wrapped up, a sense of pride washed over me as I had successfully managed to gain control back from my mistake and steer it towards a more positive direction.  

Evaluation  

Evaluation of the interview reveals positives and negatives.  I had a strong foundation of new knowledge that I was able to bring to the interview, I was able to build a strong rapport with the interviewee and I had a multitude of different questions and topics to go through. However, this strong research also led to the negatives or the “what could’ve been done differently?” The positives in this situation led to the negative of being told by the interviewee that my sources were unreliable.  

Undoubtedly, it would’ve been better for all parties involved if I had researched the reliability of my sources before the interview. However, the error was also advantageous in that it enabled me to extend my knowledge base. As stated previously, I took a pause, recalibrated, and adapted immediately. First and foremost, I asked how and where I am able to find better sources to continue my research. This proves the comfortability between me and the interviewee as I was able ask without fear of judgement, this comes from the established ‘common ground’ [Adams, P. 5]. He kindly explained the reasoning behind the unreliability, I was reading about a country written from another countries perspective that has no insider knowledge, it was almost an unethical source. The shift in behaviour of the interviewee also aided in my ability to adapt. When he alerted me to my wrong use of sources, he did so in a calm, informative manner that gave me the comfortability to ask about said sources. 

Analysis  

When looking for answers as to why the interview had a lapse, it leads back to my use of The World Bank as a source. During my research, it seemed that every website I was on was taking survey results or statistics from The World Bank, so I went directly to the source, a mistake a now realise. This, however, happens more commonly than I previously thought, in Researching Skills for Journalists, it is stated that ‘reusing the same stories from a limited number of sources leads to the homogenisation of news, narrows down world views to a particularly westernised agenda and increases the likelihood of misinformation being repeated’ [Edwards, P.23]. The thought that my reliability on a certain source could ‘narrow down world views to a particularly westernised agenda’ would undoubtedly lead me to falter, especially when I’m writing for an organisation that is trying to fight poverty on a global scale.

Regarding journalism, research is at the forefront, meaning I knew the extent of what I had to prepare for the interview, and this is before the added pressure of knowing it may be published. Edwards notes that, even in the ever-changing world of journalism ‘the need for research to be meticulous, take considered decisions, and be well informed will never change’ [Edwards,P. 31]. This ‘meticulousness’ of the research I should have prepared, is what led to my concern when I realised my error in trusting an unreliable source. Edwards later goes on to add that secondary sources ‘should always be treated with caution since, by their very nature, the information you receive has in some way be processed of mediated’ [Edwards, P.23], which is something I will now take with me in future.  

From this, I was concerned about the academic I was interviewing. Although he acted in a respectful manner, this does not mean he was not questioning my skills. My main thought as to why this was because of his background in a university setting. Realistically, he must be used to students using unreliable sources. However, I also believe that the fact I had other research planned showed my credibility. It was a way of proving that I had a wide breadth of scholarly research. I asked where I should be looking and that’s when he told me about The Other Path or articles written by himself. ‘The Financialization Trap’, an article he wrote for The NACLA Report on the Americas 55, really helped me understand the financial infrastructure of the region and I was able to build the rest of my research for my article after the interview, subsequently giving me. 

This ties in with the need to be credible in professional environments. By having the skills to adapt and be flexible under pressure. Edwards states that:  

‘If you simply cover the questions in order, there’s a danger the interview won’t flow       naturally. Clutching a well-thumbed sheet of paper can also make you question                  appear lacking in confidence and anxious… you should always have some questions         ready, but they are not a shopping list to be adhered to’ 

Edwards, P. 141 

When interviewing, it must ‘flow smoothly throughout’ [Adams, P. 36], which wouldn’t happen if I were to rigidly stick to the questions I had curated. This mirrors what Adams notes when they state that the aim of every interview is to approach it ‘as prepared as possible’ [Adams, P. 81], meaning you’re not solely relying on a ‘well-thumbed piece of paper’. As I was writing for an organisation, I had to come across as confident otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to produce the article for them, which would have been detrimental to the work placement.  

I believe that I saved this interview due to my previous work experience. As I have been working since I was fifteen within customer facing jobs, I harbour the ability to fall back on my people skills or ‘being a human’ [Adams, P.5]. My adaptability allows me to connect with people for my advantage. In Interviewing for Journalists (2009) it is noted that:  

‘The most useful characteristic for an all-round interviewer is to be likeable, the sort         of person who can get on with almost anybody and is interested in everybody: a                    person who people are happy to talk to, who comes across as a human being first, a           journalist second’ 

Adams, P.5 

 This would come most naturally to myself due to my experience within customer facing jobs. I can help customers with their issues and then find a solution, even if it was something as small as finding the tomatoes, it has unconsciously prepared me for a higher stakes situation like this. 

Conclusion  

To conclude the ‘event’, I want to look back on what I can learn from this. If I were given the opportunity to do this again, I would approach it differently. This experience has taught me to never take secondary research at face value. Since then, I have been conducting small research breaks into who wrote a scholarly article or the authenticity of the website I’m researching from. I wanted to reflect on this specific event as it gives me an opportunity to not only learn about a process vital to my career goals, but also what to do and not to do when interviewing. Although I think that I handled the situation efficiently, I don’t want to find myself in it again.  

When looking back at my whole experience within my work placement, I am thankful for the skills I have learnt that I would not have picked up in university. Although my degree has given me the research and writing skills, the internship has given me the opportunity to write and publish my own articles (within the organisations ideas) on a third-party website. Although my time at The Borgen Project did not have a lot of room for growth, I have seen some career growth from other participants in different careers, but silence from others. When looking at the work placement now, I like how good it looks on my CV and it shows needed experience when applying for jobs. 

Action Plan  

Moving forward with this experience, it has given me two important factors to take with me into a professional setting. Firstly, the need to always check the reliability of the sources used in interviews, or as Holmes very aptly puts it ‘remember: verify all sources’ [Holmes, P.45], this can then be expanded into any research or analysis I need to take on the future or in a future career. Secondly, it was a good reminder that I have strong people skills to fall back on. As I had already built a rapport with the interviewee before we started the serious questioning, when my questions fell apart, I could rely on my people skills to keep discussions going even with my limited, newly researched knowledge of the region.  While it was nice to have these as a reminder of these key points, I also got to experience utilising my network, a common practice found in the workplace, as well as multiple new articles to add to my portfolio, including one with an interview.  

Bibliography

Adams, S. Interviewing for Journalists, Routledge, Abingdon, 2009 

Bradshaw, P. & Rohumaa, L. The Online Journalism Handbook: Skills to Survive and Thrive in the Digital Age, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, 2011 

 Edwards, V. Researching Skills for Journalists, Routledge, Abingdon, 2016

Gibbs. G. Learning By Doing, A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods, Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, 2013

Holmes. T, The 21st Century Journalism Handbook, Pearson, Harlow, 2013