How to Conduct Expert Interviews Efficiently and Effectively

TL;DR: Start by clarifying the key questions your project needs to answer, then build expert profiles designed to address those questions. Track experts in a structured spreadsheet, prioritize based on value, prepare targeted questions, manage conversations efficiently, take verbatim notes with highlights for key quotes, and synthesize insights systematically. This guide walks you through the entire process with battle-tested strategies.

Why Expert Interviews Matter in Consulting (And Why You Need a System)

Expert interviews are extremely common in consulting engagements and are often owned by junior consultants (analysts and associates). For example, in a due diligence, it's not uncommon for a recent hire to be responsible for managing dozens of expert interviews to get the data needed for a recommendation.

I've had to do a lot of expert interviewing, and it can be hard to keep track of it all (and become very tedious) if you don't have a system for managing it. Plus, expert interviews can be time-consuming and expensive—especially when working with expert networks where firms pay by the minute. Managing these interviews well ensures you extract the most value while minimizing wasted time (and money).

This guide synthesizes everything I know about efficiently managing expert interviews from start to finish, including best practices on structuring your outreach, preparing for interviews, taking effective notes, and synthesizing insights.

Step 1: Define Objectives and Expert Profiles

Before contacting a single expert network, you need to be explicit about what you're trying to learn. When this foundational step is rushed or omitted, it leads to misaligned expert profiles,  wasted interviews or missing pieces of information.

1.1 Identify Key Project Questions

Start by working with your team to identify the critical questions your project needs to answer, for example:

• What decisions will your client make based on your findings?
• What information is missing from existing data sources?
• Which assumptions in your hypothesis need validation?
• What industry nuances might not appear in published reports?

I find it helpful to categorize questions into themes (market size, competitive landscape, pricing dynamics, regulatory concerns, etc.) and distinguish between "must-know" vs. "nice-to-know" information.

Pro Tip: Create a living document of key questions that your entire team can access and update. On my last healthcare project, we maintained a shared Excel file where we tracked each question, its priority level, current hypotheses, and which experts could potentially answer it.

1.2 Design Expert Profiles to Fill Knowledge Gaps

Once you've clarified your questions, design expert profiles specifically tailored to answer them:

• Match question complexity with appropriate seniority level: C-suite executives for strategic questions, middle management for operational details, frontline staff for day-to-day realities.
• Consider varied perspectives: For controversial topics or anytime you’re looking for a specific number (e.g., growth rate), seek input from multiple experts. When multiple experts confirm the same information it increases conviction with the answer.
• Look beyond the obvious roles: Sometimes adjacent positions offer better insights (e.g., a sales rep might know more about customer pain points than a product manager)
• Think about timeframes and tenure: Recent employees for current practices, longer-tenured veterans for historical context and evolution. Also consider how long the expert was in the role (I place less importance on any roles that were held for fewer than 2 years)

Step 2: Reach Out to Expert Networks & Track Experts

Before scheduling your first call, you need to identify where to find relevant experts. Most consulting firms maintain relationships with expert networks (e.g., GLG, AlphaSights, Third Bridge) that connect consultants with industry professionals.

1.1 Working with Expert Networks

• Check which expert networks your firm uses: Your firm likely has preferred vendors with established relationships (e.g., GLG, AlphaSights, Third Bridge) that connect consultants with industry professionals. Reach out to all of the ones your company uses so you cast the widest net.
  
• Find your network contacts: Most expert networks assign dedicated account managers to each client firm—identify them early and build rapport. A simple "Hey, I'm working on X project and would love to connect about how we might collaborate" email usually works.
  
• Prepare a clear expert request: Define the ideal expert profile, including:
  
• Seniority: C-level executives, managers, frontline employees, etc.
• Topic expertise: Topics, situation or context that they have experience with
• Industry & geography: Specify the industry and geography, but be broad 
• Example companies: Firms where ideal experts may have worked (avoiding direct competitors if necessary)

Example: Customer Expansion for an Ad Tech Client

Let’s say my client was a US-based Ad Tech company that developed automation workflows to generate content, create and manage social media ad campaigns and track performance metrics in real time. They specifically focus on consumer goods and have historically targeted small direct-to-consumer brands. Now they are considering an expansion into enterprise clients. Here are the profiles I might want to include. 

Profile 1: Senior executive/leader (e.g., CMO, Head of Marketing, VP Marketing) from a US-based consumer goods company (e.g., P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever), ideally within the last 4 years. Should be able to speak to some/all of the following topics:

1. Trends regarding the shift from traditional advertising platforms (TV, print) to social media and influencer marketing
2. Evaluation of ad-tech or automation/AI tools used to automate content generation, campaign management and performance tracking
3. Procurement process or priorities for vendors in their department or more broadly

Profile 2: Mid-level marketing manager from a US-based consumer goods company (e.g., P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever), ideally within the last 2 years. Should be able to speak to some/all of the following topics:

1. Existing process for creating and managing social media campaigns 
2. Current pain points and solutions for creating and managing social media campaigns
3. Perspective on workflow automation tools within marketing

Having the mix of seniority ensures I’m asking questions to the person who is most likely to have the best answer to it.

Pro Tip: Be specific about expertise but flexible about backgrounds.

2.2 Tracking & Prioritizing Experts

The expert networks are going to send you A LOT of experts. Some will be rockstars and some will be totally irrelevant. You need to track and prioritize the best ones.

• Use a spreadsheet to track:
  
• Name, company, title
• Years of experience
• Areas of expertise
• Source (expert network, LinkedIn, personal connection)
• Status (contacted, scheduled, completed)
• Categorize experts by topic: Align experts with your project's key themes to ensure comprehensive coverage. I do this in the spreadsheet. I’ll have a heading for each theme and then jot down notes about that expert’s familiarity with the topic.

Free Download: Click here to download a free template for tracking expert interviews.

Step 3: Pre-Interview Preparation

Expert interviews typically last 30-60 minutes. Every minute counts and thorough preparation ensures you extract useful insights efficiently.

3.1 Structure Your Questions

Prepare a list of questions in advance. Circulate this to your manager / consultant to get input and add additional questions. Here are some tips:

• Organize by themes / topics
• Include a mix of open-ended and to-the-point questions
• Prioritize must-have vs. nice-to-have questions: Cover critical areas first in case time runs short
• Be adaptable: Be ready to pivot if the expert offers unexpected but valuable insights

Step 4: Conducting the Interview Effectively

During the interview, efficiency and focus are key. Your goal is to extract maximum value while holding a professional conversation.

4.1 Managing the Conversation

• Avoid unnecessary introductions: If your firm conducts blinded interviews, keep your intro minimal
• Get to the point quickly: Skip the expert's full career history—stick to relevant topics
• Politely interrupt when necessary: When an expert rambles or goes off on tangents, redirect with: "That's really interesting, but I'd love to know more about [key topic]?"
• Understand confidentiality boundaries: Never share client details, and follow your firm's disclosure policies. If an expert shares potentially confidential information (especially Material Non-Public Information), flag it to your manager and compliance team immediately after the call

Confidence Tip: Interviewing senior executives can be intimidating at first. Remember that they agreed to the call because they want to share their knowledge (and get paid!).

4.2 Note-Taking Best Practices

• Designate roles when possible: Ideally, have one person lead conversation while another takes notes
• Use a single document: Keep all notes from all interviews in a single Word document with page breaks between experts. This creates a searchable knowledge base when you can't remember who shared a specific insight.
• Use H2 headers: Start each interview with the expert's name and title formatted as a header. This creates an outline for easy navigation between interviews.
• Don't worry about formatting in real-time: Notes will get messy during verbatim transcription. Focus on capturing content over structure.
• Capture direct quotes for key insights: You won't capture everything verbatim, but when something particularly valuable is said, get it word-for-word. I often ask: "That's a fascinating point—do you mind repeating it so I can capture it accurately?"

Pro Tip: I applied this approach during a consumer goods project and created a slide with quantitative data on one side and three impactful expert quotes on the other. One quote resonated so strongly that the client CEO was still referencing it a year later in company meetings!

About AI for Notetaking

Most expert networks and consulting firms prohibit AI tools for recording, transcribing, or summarizing expert interviews, so manual notetaking remains essential. If your company does permit AI assistance, always get the full transcript, not just a summary. You—not an algorithm—should judge what's important.

Step 5: Synthesizing Insights Post-Interview

Once interviews are complete, you’re still not done: the final step is transforming raw notes into actionable insights.

5.1 Organize Your Notes for Maximum Utility

• Clean up obvious errors: Fix spelling and grammar mistakes, but don't waste time converting notes to prose
• Use bullet points for clarity and skimmability
• Summarize 3-5 key takeaways at the top of each expert's section for quick reference

5.2 Highlight Key Themes

• Use color coding: I categorize insights by topic using different highlighter colors (e.g., pricing trends in yellow, consumer demand in pink)
• Identify patterns across interviews: What themes emerge repeatedly?
• Flag contradictory perspectives: Experts sometimes disagree or get things wrong. Highlight conflicts and determine how to reconcile them (through secondary research or additional interviews)

5.3 The 'So What' Factor

• Extract core insights that directly impact your project's recommendations
• Write a one-paragraph executive summary at the top of your document capturing:
• Key takeaways across all interviews
• Implications for your project
• Next steps or follow-up questions

Throughout the Interview Process

As you go through the process of interviewing experts, here are a few added tips.

Update your manager regularly: You don’t need to send them a transcript after every single interview, but keep them in the loop. Send a short email with the major insights and a link to the notes after every 2-3 interviews.

Don’t hesitate to pivot: If you’re 2-3 interviews in and you’re not getting the info you need, see if you need to adjust your profiles and go back to the expert networks. Don’t waste time and money continuing to interview people who don’t have the info you need.

Don’t leave summarization and note clean up to the end: Clean up your notes and summarize insights immediately after the interview if you can. This is when the conversation is freshest.

Avoid scheduling too many interviews back-to-back: Obviously this can’t always be avoided, but try to leave at least an hour before interviews to give time for note clean up. Personally, I really struggle to do more than 4 expert interviews in a single day. If you can spread them out a bit, do it. 

Common Failure Modes

After conducting dozens of expert interviews, I've made pretty much every mistake possible. Save yourself the trouble:

• Overloading your schedule: Avoid booking more than 3-4 expert calls per day. Interview quality degrades when you're exhausted.
• Confirmation bias: Don't just listen for evidence supporting your existing hypothesis. Be open to contradictory insights.
• Excessive focus on outliers: One expert's unusual opinion might be fascinating but misleading. Look for consensus across multiple experts.
• Forgetting to capture metadata: Always note the expert's background information alongside their insights. Context matters when weighing different opinions.
• Letting the expert control the conversation: Some experts love to talk. While being respectful, maintain control of the direction and pace.

Quick Reference Guide

Expert interviewing is both an art and a science. The structure above will give you a solid foundation, but you'll develop your own style with practice. The most successful junior consultants I've mentored are those who treat expert interviews not as a box-checking exercise but as a strategic intelligence-gathering operation.