interview skills Archives - Clapperton Media

When PR teams prepare a client for a media opportunity, messaging quite rightly takes centre stage. But strong messaging alone doesn’t guarantee strong interviews. At Clapperton Media Associates, we regularly see spokespeople who know their content inside-out still fall short — not because they lack knowledge, but because they’ve missed three critical skills that shape how journalists receive and use their words.

These skills are often overlooked in pre-interview briefings, or dismissed by clients who believe they “sound fine already”. In practice, they make the difference between an effective interview and a frustrating one. Here are the three that matter most:

1. Tone: Expertise Isn’t Enough

A spokesperson can hold every relevant fact in their head and be a world-class expert — but if they sound dismissive, bored, defensive or aloof, the interview immediately suffers.

Tone determines whether a journalist warms to the speaker or braces for a difficult conversation. The goal is to sound engaged and engaging: confident without arrogance, warm without gushing, authoritative without condescension. It’s a balance many senior executives underestimate.

2. Structure: Think, Then Speak

A common issue is that a journalist asks a question and the spokesperson dives straight into an answer with no reflection. To the expert, it makes perfect sense — they can mentally stitch it all together. To the journalist, whose expertise lies in interviewing and shaping stories, the result can feel fragmented, unclear, or unmoored from the point.

Training clients to pause, structure, and signpost before they speak leads to clearer quotes, better coverage, and far fewer follow-up questions driven by confusion rather than curiosity.

3. Length: More Isn’t More

Well-meaning spokespeople often want to be as helpful as possible. If they have 20 years’ experience, they may feel obliged to offer every angle, nuance and historical footnote.

Unfortunately, this overwhelms rather than assists. Long, meandering answers encourage journalists to conflate issues, lose focus, or latch onto details the client didn’t intend to foreground.

Shorter, sharper answers maintain control of the narrative and make it easier for journalists to extract accurate, useful quotes.

Helping PR Teams Reduce Risk and Improve Results

These issues are rarely about lack of skill — they’re about lack of practice. The right training helps spokespeople communicate in ways journalists can immediately use, reducing the risk of poor coverage and increasing the likelihood of meaningful, positive stories.

Clapperton Media Associates specialises in preparing senior leaders, technical experts, and fast-moving startups for exactly these challenges. If your clients are heading into interviews, we can help ensure they deliver with clarity, confidence and impact.

To discuss tailored training for your team or clients, get in touch.

This morning I was halfway through a full day of media training — four delegates before lunch, five in the afternoon, all online. At one point, one of the delegates paused after a question and said:

“I’m glad you asked me that.”

He meant it. The question had landed right in his sweet spot, giving him the chance to shine.

Moments like that are great, but in truth they’re often a fluke. In real interviews, you can’t count on the journalist asking what your client wants to be asked.

That’s why, if you want to get the most value out of media training, the focus shouldn’t just be on the comfortable questions. PR professionals can add real impact by briefing trainers on the questions their clients don’t want to hear.

Start with the hard stuff

A simple but powerful exercise is to ask your client: “What do you really hope you’re not asked in an interview?” Once you have the answer, make that the starting point. Ask it in the training. Push them to answer. Refine the response. Ask it again. Repeat until they’re confident.

It might feel uncomfortable. The client might even leave the session thinking they’ve been put through the wringer. But that’s the point. A tough training room is infinitely better than being blindsided on live radio or TV.

Better tough now than unprepared later

Media training isn’t about rehearsing easy wins — it’s about preparing spokespeople for the moments that really matter. A well-handled difficult question can build trust and credibility far more than a polished soundbite ever will.

So next time a client asks you about media training, or even just about how an interview is likely to go, start here: what’s the one question they really don’t want to be asked? That’s where real preparation begins.

You’re a public relations professional and you’ve secured some coverage for your client. They are going to meet a journalist but they don’t appear willing to practice for the interview. Here’s a strategy that might help.

“No Comment” is something people often say when they don’t want journalists to write anything.

It doesn’t work. When lead trainer Guy was a very young journalist the chair of a major technology company told him he didn’t want to comment on something and he didn’t want to see that coming out as “NAME declined to comment” either.

At the tender age of 24 or so, Guy allowed himself to be pushed into this and didn’t put it in. Which was wrong as stating that the chair had declined to comment would have been a perfectly accurate statement of what took place in the conversation.

The chair in question was presumably savvy enough to realise that “no comment” never sounds completely neutral. Here’s a short video with another example – seriously, try never to say it. It really doesn’t work.