by Marshall Brown and Annabelle Reitman
[A different networking technique] is informational interviewing. Informational interviewing is a screening process. You use this to screen careers, jobs, locations, industries, and employers before you change careers or accept employment with a new company or organization. It is also used to find answers to very specific questions that occur to you during your job-hunt.
You conduct informational interviews with people who are in jobs you like, want to have, or think you want to have. You ask them about their job. You are trying to get information to help you make a career decision and at the same time increase your networking contacts. This is not an interview or a request to hire you. You do not conduct these interviews with those who have the power to hire you, you conduct these interviews with those who are doing work that you want to do. Do not take a copy of your résumé with you to these interviews. It’s not about you; it’s about them!
If you have no specific questions to ask try these:
- How did you get into this particular line of work?
- What educational/training requirements does someone need to succeed in this position?
- What things do you like the most about your job?
- What do you like least about your job?
- What’s a typical day like for you?
- Who else is in this same line of work that you recommend I go talk to?
Your objective in conducting an informational interview is to get answers and guidance for you to consider your career options. Once you have gathered information you can process it and begin strategizing. Does this new information reinforce what you already know and the goals you have already set? Or does it cause you to reconsider your present course? Did any new thoughts or ideas come up n the course of your interviews? Are they worth investigating?
Create some next steps or action items as a result of these interviews. Then be persistent! Continue to do what you know to do. Targeting your résumés for specific jobs and audiences, properly create and submit online résumés, networking, and conducting informational interviews. Separately, each technique yields results. All together, as a multi-pronged aggressive job search, you increase your odds and better your chances of obtaining your ideal job.
Because informational interviews have been so abused in the past, make sure you do not take your résumé with you to an informational interview. According to Cory Edwards, president of Partnering For Success in Sterling, Virginia, “the most positive results are obtained when participants do not have their résumés, but follow up with it as requested.” If you are able to produce a résumé when asked at an informational interview, then the person you are interviewing knows you weren’t serious about the interview, but desperate to get a job. And remember, you don’t want to appear desperate! So instead, send your résumé as a follow up if requested.
From High Level Resumes, by Marshall Brown and Annabelle Reitman, copyright ©2005, Career Press, Franklin Lakes, NJ. Reprinted with permission.
