No matter where you are in your career, informational interviews are an excellent option, especially when you are getting to know a new person, a new industry, or even wondering where your next career step is. Even though there are many blog posts on what to do at an informational interview or even how to prepare, I can say, as someone who has both done them and asked for them, that I have made probably more mistakes than I care to admit. It’s not necessarily a good or bad thing. But knowing how to conduct yourself when it’s time to do an informational interview, especially when it is someone whose time and resources are precious, is essential.
Now that I have finally gotten to a point where I feel confident in giving valuable feedback on interviews, I will share with you all my tips on things to keep in mind the next time you want to book an informational consultation with someone.
#1: Do your research and develop a clear reason why you want to meet with them.
This doesn’t have to be an extended, drawn-out response or even something convoluted and complicated. Simply knowing why you want to meet with someone prepares you with how you should approach reaching out and even how the actual conversation will go. It also allows you to know how to tailor your outreach. Seriously, you don’t want people to think you only reached out to them because they were #475 on your LinkedIn search. You want people to feel that you are explicitly reaching out to them for a particular reason. Because if you’re not, then what are you doing it for?
Get clear on why you want to meet with a particular person and what you hope to gain. Here’s a newsflash: If you want to meet with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and expect them to offer you a job on the spot… I’m sorry, that usually only happens in Lifetime movies.
However, maybe you want to get to know someone because you admire their career journey. Or you’re a budding entrepreneur, and you’re looking for tips on how to juggle being an entrepreneur with having a day job. Maybe you like someone on a particular platform that they’re on, and you’re looking to learn more about growing and scaling. Whatever the reason is, you must have very clear and established expectations of the conversation, which can only happen if you first know why you want to talk to a particular person.
Doing your research also means finding out the best method of outreach. For example, I personally do not mind if someone reaches out to me by LinkedIn or finds my email through a third party, and then reaches out and introduces themselves that way. However, I have a problem with the people who reach out to me in my Instagram DMS because if you simply went to my profile, you would see that my email address is right there in the description.
Simple things like that show an immature stance on research and can reflect poorly on you. For instance, how can you say you want to be a journalist who would have to research those sources and find viable opportunities to talk to them if you can’t simply read an Instagram bio? Small things like that may look harmless, but they actually do send a big signal. I would recommend that you sit down and find the contact information for the people you want to talk to. More than likely, if they are a prominent figure, they will have their contact information somewhere out in the open that is easily findable.
#2: Prepare for the actual informational interview.
A lot of that will be determined by who you are interviewing and why you are interviewing them. But the fundamentals of a good interview are all the same. You should know your subject in and out. You should have relevant segway points that tie why you are talking to them in particular, and you should have studied their platforms and maybe even their recent work. And then you should come prepared with valuable questions. I cannot tell you how many times I have been in informational interviews, or even just interviews in general, where the person has asked me very rudimentary questions like where am I from? What school did I go to? What was my major, etc.
Now, you can’t always blame people for how they are or what they do. But the problem is that information is already out there in the world. It takes no more than a few seconds to Google someone, watch their past interviews, listen to their podcasts, check out their website, etc. Do yourself a favor and do your research before crafting your questions. Because once you actually know who you’re talking to, you can tailor the questions to really get the most out of that time.
I remember I was granted an interview with a fashion editor years ago. She said I would have 15 minutes, so after I came to her office, I sat and talked to her. Literally, at the 15-minute mark, she excused me, and security walked me downstairs. Most people don’t have time to sit for hours and hours and hours going over small talk. If you find someone who does, that is wonderful. And it comes few and far between.
So what kind of questions should you ask in an informational interview?
Tailor the questions specifically to what it is that you’re trying to understand. If you are a new content creator, perhaps you want to talk about how this person mitigated their platform from A to Z. Or what skills did they acquire that helped them scale from 5,000 to 100,000 followers. Specific questions not only give you clear answers, which ultimately help you in whatever purpose that you have an informational interview, but it also shows the interviewee that you take yourself and, more importantly, take them seriously. Even though your interview may only be a few minutes, you want to leave a lasting impression. You never know when that person may have an opportunity to help you out or just extend the baton forward. I’m always looking to help other women, especially young, Black and brown women growing and scaling in media and tech. That being said, I don’t want to stick my neck out for someone who might not be worth the investment at the moment because they don’t have the tenacity to improve and want to be better.
You need to think long-term. When delving into these interviews, if you want to think short term, you get short term results.
#3: The follow-up is so crucial.
Honestly, the work you do before the interview, and the work you do after the interview, is probably more important than the interview itself. The reason why is because no one wants to feel like they’re being taken advantage of. Imagine if someone reached out to you and talked to you for 15 minutes, allowed you to pour your whole heart out, and then at the end, you never heard from them again?
Keep up with your contacts, reach out to them and let them know how you’re doing. If you run into them at an industry event, remind them that you all spoke and give them updates about your career journey. Let them know if you took any of their tips and put it into action and you saw results.
This is honestly the tip that I say because I have made these mistakes myself. I am very much a reclusive person who is much more introverted than most people think. I did a lot of informational interviews when I first started out in the industry. I was so terrified that the person never wanted to speak with me that I didn’t do justice to the following up.
Don’t be like me.
Reach out and stay engaged. Continue to highlight their work, continue to extend a hand, offer your services if you see that they need help shadowing them for a day if the opportunity arises. Essentially what I’m saying is that that informational interview should not be where the relationship ends.
A thank you note is customary. I know some people who still do handwritten thank you notes. But a digital one can also suffice. Make sure that you recap what you two discussed, as well as what value it brought you. People want to know that their time was not wasted. And if you can connect the dots with how them taking time out of their day has helped you, not only do you solidify a working relationship with them, but it probably will encourage them to want to continue to do informational interviews with other people.
Those are my tips on things to keep in mind when doing an informational interview with someone in your industry. What are your tips? Leave them down below.
