Dressing Tips

1. Wear comfortable clothes. If you never wear a tie at work and then you put one on for an interview, it can make you uncomfortable.
   
   
2. If you do want to wear a jacket of some kind, solid colors are best.
   
   
3. Nothing extremely bright, no checks, extreme stripes or dramatic herringbone patterns - they tend to vibrate on screen.
   
   
4. If you wear ties at work, wear a tie for your interview. Solid colors are best. Strong stripes can cause problems.
   
   
5. Shirts/Blouses - pure white is not great. We prefer creamy off whites (yellow, green or blue tint) or solid colors such as blue or yellow (not too bright).
   
   
6. Eye glasses can shimmer and give off light kicks, but we can light around them. If you need glasses to see and that’s the way people know you, wear them.
   
   
7. You may want to check your hair and makeup before taping.

Tips for Answering Questions

1. We will have water at the interview; you will probably want it.
   
   
2. Don’t over-prep or memorize unless you are a vigorous and frequent speech giver. Otherwise, let us help you get the information across with our questions.
   
   
3. Tape is inexpensive and we are more than willing to work with you to get answers that work.
   
   
4. Short answers are optimal — no more than a few sentences long. Stick to talking points if you have them, and let us help you get them across. This is not a Mike Wallace pressure interview for “60 Minutes”, so don’t get wigged out. We are on your side, and we will do our best to make you look great on camera.
   
   
5. Please, no notes in your hand. You will instinctively look to them for help and we want you to focus on what’s in your head, not what’s on the paper.
   
   
6. You will be answering questions asked to you by an interviewer seated next to the camera. Don’t look into the camera, and don’t try to give your answer or statement to any other people in the room when we are filming. Just focus on the interviewer as if they were the only person in the room. (You may see people being interviewed on news programs from a remote questioner, in which case they speak directly to the camera. We are not doing this, so just interact with the interviewer as if you’re conversing with them only.)
   
   
7. It’s helpful to restate the question as the first part of your answer. This is probably the most important tip of all.
   Example: What is your favorite animal at the zoo?
   Bad: “The penguins.”
   Good: “My favorite animals at the zoo are the penguins.
   I like them because...”
   
   
8. Try not to reference other portions of the interview. “As I state earlier...I love penguins.” This may sound irrelevant if we do not use your first answer in the
   final video.
   
   
9. You may be surprised by how little of the interview gets used in the end. We will only be using the best of your answers, so that should take the pressure off. Even though that is the case, we are learning a great deal of information from different perspectives that we can incorporate into the final script.
   
   
10. Most of all, the key is to relax and enjoy the process.  The reason we’re interviewing you is because you’re extremely knowledgeable, passionate, and articulate about a subject.  Let that knowledge and passion come out naturally, and your personality will shine on camera!