In contrast to the conventional job interview, the information interview is not part of the candidate selection process. It is an opportunity to:
- Career readiness – do I really want to enter this kind of career?
- Career getting – help you get a job
- Career flexibility – helps you have contacts in other places
- Hearing good ideas – helps you bring ideas from other fields / places to your work
Tips for reaching out to potential contacts
Thanks to David Malone and Dane Emerling for their great contribution!
Assume
- People want to be helpful and support your journey even if they don’t know you
- They have done lots of these types of interviews and it quickly becomes clear whether this is going to be an interesting/productive interview or a painful one
- They are busy–they might not want to have a lengthy, really interesting intellectual discussion
Prepare
- Be formal in your ask for their time–show that you really respect it by watching the time and offering to end the conversation if it goes beyond the set amount
- What is the organization the person works for? What is its mission? How is it funded (can look up their taxes on GuideStar if it is a nonprofit) Who in the organization has your dream job?
- What does the person do? What have they done in the past? Who are they connected to on LinkedIn?
- What other organizations are in the space they work in that you are interested in?
- Prep specific questions for them–write them out in a notebook with their name printed in big letters at the top
- Keep it short: usually less than 150 words
- Emphasize learning: don’t directly ask for a job or a favor (resume review) if you don’t know them
- Be specific: out of all of the people in the world—why do you want to talk to them as an individual?
- Remind: If they don’t respond after seven business days, reply to your first message with a friendly nudge that you’re interested in talking with them. After another seven business days, you can try one more time, but after that, you should move on to other contacts
- Arrange a meeting, phone call, or video chat; building rapport is harder if you just ask your questions in an email.