Conduct targeted outreach

Professional communities and events allow you to be an active participant in the field or industry you want to join! You learn what is happening in the industry and interact with people doing cool things that can give you insider knowledge of fields, organizations, and roles. 

Actions: 

• Participate in events and communities that align with your professional interests. If you are searching for events and communities that are interesting to you, review Find people, communities, and events.
• Send status updates to individuals you have engaged with to stay connected and continue to grow your professional relationship.
• Reflect on the feedback, knowledge, and advice gained to adapt your search.

During your search, you learn about and explore different fields, organizations,  and roles. In this process you build assumptions about the type of work you want to do and the fields and organizations where this work can be found. How do you know if your assumptions are correct? One way is through informational interviews. Dorie Clark, author of Stand Out Networking puts it simply. 

Informational interviews are essential to helping you find out more about the type of industry, company, or role you’re interested in. You may think you already know all about a certain position, but speaking to someone directly gives you the opportunity to test your assumptions.

Informational interviews also serve another important benefit, the opportunity to connect with another person in a 1:1 conversation. Some will end after the interview, where others will lead to the person becoming part of your professional community.

Overview of Informational Interviews

If you’re new to informational interviews, it may be helpful to learn more about what they are. Remember, we call them informational interviews, but they could be called informational meetings, coffee chats, or a number of other names. 

Actions:

• Read this HBR article about how to get the most out of an informational interview. It highlights some additional advice from Dorie Clark. 
• Read a second article like this one to confirm many of the benefits of informational interviewing you learned from the previous article. 
• Use this slide deck as an additional way to see the steps involved in an informational interview.
• Watch this LinkedIn Learning course which goes into the details of an informational interview. 
• Talk to your peers and alums about their experience conducting informational interviews. Learn from their successes and mistakes so you can approach your informational interviews with more confidence.

 

Requesting an Informational Interview

This is your first opportunity to make a positive impression with the person you’re hoping to connect with. It’s so important we dedicate an entire segment of the OCC to the topic.

Actions:

• Review the Make a Request section of the Online Career Center. 
• Reflect on your own experience when a stranger has reached out to you for the first time. Perhaps it was a younger student who was interested in your master’s program. What approach did their impression leave on you? Consider the same reflection, but this time, put yourself in the “shoes” of the recipient of your request. What do you need to communicate for a positive experience?

 

Preparation Before an Informational Interview

Congratulations! You’ve made a good impression with your outreach and have a time set to meet (virtually or phone for now)! Your next opportunity to make a good impression will be influenced by your preparation. We don’t advocate preparing to the extent you are an expert on the organization or role, but enough to where you can converse intelligently and ask good questions customized for the person.

Actions:

• Research the person, organization, and field. The power of Google and other free technology allows you to be pretty informed going into the conversation. 
  • Use Duke’s Business Intelligence tools to review topics and trends. Remember you can request help from a reference librarian to be your guide.
  • Use LinkedIn to learn more about the person’s professional history and identify groups or interests you may have in common.
  • View press releases, company investor calls or reports, company websites, and other public notices to understand the current state of the company and their plan moving forward.
• Prepare the questions you will ask in the informational interview for you to connect and learn. But remember, aim for an informational interview to be a conversation (not an interrogation).

 

During an Informational Interview

You’ve arrived at the discussion. You’re prepared with engaging questions and now want to try your best to make the interaction a conversation. Use some of the resources below to help you think about the art of conversation and what you can do to set the interaction up for success. 

Actions:

• Refer back to this section to refresh how to introduce yourself. Remember you want to spend most of the time in conversation. Take only a few minutes to introduce yourself with the most relevant information for the conversation.
• Read this article with tips for making conversations better. Don’t be confused or wary by the fact the article is about a marriage counseling approach.  Read about halfway down and you’ll see the learning is relevant to a lot of conversations and we think the tips are ones to apply to an informational interview. 
• Consider this slightly shorter article with 5 tips to have quality conversations. 

 

Follow-up  & Next Steps After An Informational Interview

This is one of the most important steps in building the connection with the individual. And one students are most likely to forget.  Make a plan for how you will follow-up and stay connect when the conversations go well. 

Actions: 

• Use a system to track your past and upcoming meetings. Interstride offers you a meeting tracker to enter who you met with, contact information, and valuable notes for follow-up. The valuable notes are important for knowing what you want to follow-up on later.
• Send thank you notes and status updates to individuals you have met to stay connected and continue to follow up to keep your network and search alive. 
• Reflect on the feedback, knowledge, and advice gained to adapt your search. Ask a Career Coach to review your approach if you aren’t having the experiences you hoped for. 

Using progress metrics allows you to evaluate how you are spending your time and to celebrate your successes along the search, such as setting up an informational interview, taking part in an event, or having an interview! Progress metrics are helpful for you to asses your progress, improvement areas, and help you feel accomplishment during the search process.

Actions:

• Track your search efforts using the Excel chart adapted from Orville Pierson’s The Unwritten Rules of the Highly Effective Job Search and review this handout with the definitions of each category.
  
• Evaluate your progress and celebrate your successes weekly or bi-weekly and make goals for the upcoming period. As you evaluate your progress and goal-setting, chat with a career coach!