5 Things to Consider when Doing Intercept Interview
- Know what you are trying to find
Write the summary of the main research questions on a small piece of paper or a small notebook (A5 size). Even though you already have your detailed interview guide discussion, you rarely can follow it closely during the intercept. The summary on A5 paper will help you to stay on the right track and keep reminding you what information that you need to discover.
Tips: avoid using a stack of papers that look like survey. People tend to refuse right away thinking you are doing a boring research.
2. Find somebody who is not in a rush
When you are in the field starting to find candidates, look for cues from body gestures of the people. Firstly, look for people who walk rather slowly and their eyes / gaze are not fixed into a point, avoid people who walk in a rush and have a focused gaze, usually they will reject you right away. Secondly, if you can make accidental eye contact, chances are they are not that busy and have a greater chance to be asked.
Tips: aim for stands where people need to queue alone or wait in a line, such as Chatime, they are usually more willing to chat with you ;)
3. Find a ‘base-camp’
Sometimes when your intercept location is in a commercial centre (malls / market), it is quite uncomfortable to have the interview on foot, the distractions of people passing through and the surrounding noise makes it hard to have a conversation. In addition, the scenery of your team holding pen, papers, recorders and taking photos would probably catch the attention of the malls’s security. What you can do is to split your team into two, one stays in a restaurant or cafè to get some comfortable seating for interview and the other team will search for candidates. Whenever the search team already found some candidates, bring them to the restaurant or cafè to have the interview.
Tips: if you are doing in intercept in ‘sensitive’ location, it is better to check if you need a permit to do so. You can obtain this permit from the management office of the location. This way, you can feel more at ease when a security guard checks on what you are doing.
4. Prepare incentives in advance
Plan ahead how many candidates that you aim to get, then prepare the incentives for each of the candidates. You might want to consider how much time do you need from them and their core belief and culture to determine the value of the incentives. Also it always handy to have extra incentives if something goes out of plan, for example the interview took longer than you promised to them, so that you have to give them extra.
5. Watch out for your belongings
You have heard it many times. Yet, sometimes when we dwell and focus on the interview, we sometimes forget and being unaware about our surroundings. It happened to one of our clients while doing intercept in some malls in Jakarta, he lost his rucksack in a coffeshop. We were shocked and unaware that these things would happen in such places. So please be aware of your belongings when you do an intercept. Safety first!
(DF)
originally publised at blog.somiacx.com
