“Interviews: silence is the weapon, silence and people’s need to fill it — as long as the person isn’t you, the interviewer,” Caro writes in a chapter titled “Tricks of the Trade.”
Caro likens his own interviewing process to those of fictional interviewers Inspector Maigret and George Smiley, at least in one distinct way: All three “have little devices they use to keep themselves from talking.” In the case of Maigret, Caro says, he cleans his pipe. And in the case of Smiley, he cleans his glasses.
Caro does something far more pedestrian: He writes reminders for himself to shut up.
“When I’m waiting for the person I’m interviewing to break a silence by giving me a piece of information I want, I write ‘SU’ (for Shut Up!) in my notebook,” Caro says. “If anyone were to ever look through my notebooks, he would find a lot of ‘SUs’ there.”
Whether you’re interviewing a subject or interviewing a job candidate, the same logic applies: Shut up! How that person responds to silence could speak volumes.
