How to Transcribe an Interview: Steps, Styles and a Template
The quickest way to transcribe an interview: upload the recording to HypeScribe, rename the speakers, and check every line you plan to quote against the audio. In HypeScribe, an hour-long interview is usually ready in a few minutes, split by speaker with timestamps. Typing the same hour by hand takes four to seven hours, according to the University of Bath library.
How to transcribe an interview, step by step
- Add the recording to HypeScribe. Choose Transcribe file and pick the recording (on an iPhone, from Photos or Files), or choose Transcribe by URL and paste a Google Drive link or a direct link to the file. For an interview on Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, press Meeting notes and paste the meeting link: the notetaker joins, records the call and transcribes it when the call ends. HypeScribe detects the language for you, in 99+ languages.
- Name the speakers. The transcript comes split by voice: Speaker 1, Speaker 2. Rename each one once, for example to "Interviewer" and the person's name or participant ID, and every block and every export uses the new names.
- Check what you'll quote. Search for names, numbers and dates. Click a timestamp, or select a sentence and press Play from here, to hear exactly what was said, and fix a word right in the text. If a line is credited to the wrong person, note it and fix it in the exported document. When the transcript itself is the deliverable, for research or a client, listen through the whole recording once.
- Export it. Download DOCX, PDF, TXT, SRT or Markdown, or save it to Google Docs, and put the header from our template on top.
Haven't recorded yet? Start with the recording tips below, and ask for consent at the start, on the recording.
In the example above, a reporter searches the transcript for "September", selects the sentence to quote and plays it from 14:32 before it goes into the story. The UK's Editors' Code asks the press to "take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information".
Verbatim, clean verbatim or a quote: the same answer three ways
Decide on the style before you start, because it changes how much work the transcript needs. Here is one answer from an interview with a bakery owner, written three ways:
Verbatim: "So, um, we, we opened the second shop in, uh, March, and honestly? The first six months were... [laughs] were rough."
Clean verbatim: "We opened the second shop in March, and honestly, the first six months were rough."
Quote: "The first six months were rough," said Ana Ruiz, who opened her second bakery in March.
- Verbatim keeps everything: ums, repeated words, false starts, laughter and long pauses.
- Clean verbatim keeps the person's words and drops the fillers and restarts. It's what most interviews need.
- A quote is the piece you publish. Find it in the clean text, then take the words from the recording itself: it must match what the person said, word for word, even where a cleaned-up or AI-refined version reads better.
Research guides use their own names for the same levels. The University of Bath calls clean verbatim "basic level" transcription, where "repeated or cut-off words, fillers ("you know"), and non-lexical sounds ("uh", "ah") are left out." A machine transcript often leaves out ums and false starts, so it reads close to clean verbatim. For full verbatim, listen through and add the pauses, laughs and restarts yourself. In HypeScribe, Refine with AI does the opposite job: select a passage and it fixes grammar and removes the filler words that are left. Use it for notes and summaries, not for the words inside quotation marks.
Which one you need depends on what the interview is for. If your editor, client or supervisor asks for a style, theirs wins:
Interview transcript template (with an example)
Put a short header on top of the transcript, so anyone who opens the file in a year knows who was interviewed, when, and where the recording is. Under it, one line per turn: the timestamp, the speaker and what they said.
Filled in, the top of the bakery interview looks like this:
Project: Small businesses on Main Street · Interviewee: Ana Ruiz, owner, Second Rise Bakery · Interviewer: J. Morgan · Date and place: March 3, 2026, in person · Length: 38 min · Recording file: ruiz-bakery-2026-03-03.m4a · Consent: asked at 00:00 · Style: clean verbatim
[14:20] Interviewer: How did the second shop do in its first year?
[14:32] Ana Ruiz: We opened the second shop in March, and honestly, the first six months were rough. We lost money every single week until September.
Download the interview transcript template (Word). Page 1 is blank, page 2 is the bakery interview filled in. If your transcript goes into a thesis or paper, see how to format it in APA style.
Mark what you couldn't hear the same way every time:
- [inaudible 15:52]: you couldn't make it out. Keep the time, so you can listen again.
- word [?]: you're not sure you heard it right.
- [crosstalk]: two people talking at once.
- [laughs], [pause]: only when they change the meaning.
- [P3], [Company]: a name or detail you replaced to protect the person.
How long does it take to transcribe an interview?
By hand, an hour of interview takes 4 to 7 hours to type, according to the University of Bath, and up to 10 hours depending on skill and equipment, according to the University of Leicester's oral history archive. With a transcription tool, the typing disappears and your time goes into checking. In HypeScribe, an hour-long recording is usually ready in a few minutes. Your own checking time comes on top of that.
Check these first, because that's where transcripts most often go wrong: names, numbers, dates, "can" and "can't", and who said what. More on that in our guide to speech-to-text accuracy.
Recording tips that save editing later
- Keep voices apart. In person, sit close enough that both of you are clearly heard. On Zoom, Record separate participant audio files gives each person their own file, which helps when you need to replay a passage where people talked over each other. Upload the main recording with everyone for the transcript.
- Pick a quiet room. Café chatter, music and air conditioning all end up on the recording, under the voice you need.
- Say the basics at the start. The date, both names and how to spell them, and that the person agrees to be recorded.
- Don't talk over the answer. Nodding instead of "mm-hm" keeps their words clean.
- Keep the original file. Upload the recording itself, not a copy played through speakers.
Transcribing interviews for research
- Check what your ethics approval allows before you upload. Some studies require recordings to stay on university systems or on your own computer. Anonymising the transcript later doesn't change where the recording went.
- Anonymise in the transcript, not only in the paper. Replace names with pseudonyms or tags such as [colleague 1], the same way in every transcript, and keep the list of replacements apart from the anonymised files, as the UK Data Service advises. Removing names alone is rarely enough: a job title and a town can point to one person.
- Use the same style and notation for every interview, so your coding compares like with like. The template above helps.
- Record consent on tape as well as on the form, and note it in the header.
- Keep all the study's interviews together. In HypeScribe, put them in one project, rename speakers to participant IDs, and ask the AI assistant questions across a transcript, such as every place a participant talks about cost.
Before you upload research recordings anywhere, check how the service treats them. HypeScribe doesn't see or store your recordings, and you can delete your transcripts at any time. Nobody on the team watches, listens to or reads them, and they are never used to train AI. Files are encrypted, and a transcript stays private until you share it.
When the transcripts are ready, see how to analyze interview data and how to analyze qualitative data.
Other ways: type it yourself or use what you have
Typing it yourself makes sense for a short interview, a recording that may not leave your computer, or when you need full verbatim anyway. And if you recorded on a phone or a video call, the app may already have a rough transcript:
Type in passes: first get the words down at your own pace, then listen again at normal speed for names and quotes.
What you can do with an interview in HypeScribe
With the bakery interview, a reporter can ask the AI assistant what Ana Ruiz said about hiring, jump to 15:09 to hear it, and send the transcript to the editor's Google Drive folder from the same page.
- Ways in: besides files, links and the notetaker, forward a recording by email or record live in the browser on a computer or phone.
- The transcript: speakers and timestamps, 99+ languages, the word being spoken highlighted as the recording plays, and how long each person spoke.
- Notes: an overview and outline of the conversation. If the summary comes out in another language, one click translates it.
- AI assistant: ask what was said about a topic, or for every answer about a theme, on the model you choose: GPT, Claude, Grok or DeepSeek.
- Editing: search, fix and format the text, rename speakers everywhere at once, and use Refine with AI on a passage to clean up grammar and filler words.
- Sharing: an invite by email with View or Edit access for a co-author or supervisor, or a view-only link. Anyone who has the link can read the transcript and play the recording, so turn it off when you're done. Keep a whole study or series in one project.
- 18 integrations: send transcripts to Google Drive as Google Docs, to Notion, Google Sheets or Airtable for a research log, or to HubSpot for customer interviews. Post the summary in Slack, Telegram or Gmail, or turn follow-ups into tasks in Linear, Jira, Asana, Trello or Notion. Press Send, ask the AI chat to send it (nothing goes out until you confirm), or let new transcripts go out automatically.
- MCP and API, if you work in AI tools or write code: search and read all your interviews from Claude, ChatGPT, Claude Code, Codex or Cursor through the MCP server, and use API keys in your own scripts.
Interviews, research, reporting
Turn your interview into a transcript you can quote
Upload your interview, play back the first quote you need, and see how much typing you skipped. Try HypeScribe for a week before you pick a plan.
More on interviews
- Interview transcription software compared: which tool fits journalists, researchers and recruiters.
- Interview summary examples: turn the transcript into a one-page summary.
- Interview tips for journalists: questions, recording and quotes.
- When it's legal to record a conversation and consent for AI notetakers.
FAQ
How long does it take to transcribe a 1-hour interview?
By hand, 4 to 7 hours for each hour of recording, and more if the audio is hard to hear. In HypeScribe, an hour-long recording is usually ready in a few minutes, and then you spend your time checking the quotes.
Should an interview transcript be verbatim?
Usually not. Clean verbatim, the person's words without ums and restarts, is enough for journalism, hiring and most research. Use full verbatim when how people speak is part of what you study.
How do you format an interview transcript?
Start with a header: who, when, where, how long, the recording file, consent and the style. Then one line per turn with the timestamp, the speaker's name and what they said. Our Word template has both, and our APA guide covers theses and papers.
How do I transcribe a Zoom interview?
In HypeScribe, press Meeting notes and paste the Zoom link. The notetaker joins, records the interview and transcribes it after the call. You can also record the call yourself and upload the file. The notetaker posts in the meeting chat that the call is being recorded.
Do I need permission to record an interview?
Ask anyway, on the recording. In the US, federal law needs the consent of at least one person in the conversation, but about 11 states, including California, Florida and Pennsylvania, require everyone's, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. More in our guide to when it's legal to record a conversation.
Is there a free way to transcribe an interview?
Typing it yourself with a free player such as oTranscribe costs nothing but time. HypeScribe is a paid service with a 7-day trial.
