Come Recommended: The informational interview is one of the most underrated networking techniques. You can meet someone new in your industry, at a company where you’d like to work, or someone higher up in your own company and learn some truly valuable insight for your own career. It’s all about building a relationship with the other person. If it goes well, you may even land a new career mentor.
3 comments:
These are great questions. I will definitely be using these. I have tried to do "informational interviews" via email with some industry professionals and it does not seem to work. Either they never answer me back or they send one long email and never want to correspond again. So I guess this just has to be an in person conversation technique.
This article definitely gave some great ideas about how to go about an informational interview. I know that in the past it has been hard for me to think of questions to ask in that setting,mostly because if I've done my research, I already know a lot of the specific details about the professional aspect of the job Im trying out for. This article, however, also addresses the personal questions about jobs that we often forget are important, like the social climate of a work place.
In response to Zoe, I think that these type of interviews only really work well in-person, because they can't ignore you. This might seem a little harsh, but I completely understand that everyone is busy and has a job that they need to do, and that job doesn't factor in a lengthy email correspondence with a young professional who wants answers. I do think that meeting a professional in an unofficial way and asking them questions is a great way into an industry, since you honestly never know what advice or help they might be able to offer. Of course, there are some that won't get you any more than information, but that can be hugely helpful too.
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