A lot of us have mandatory (or highly recommended) work from home mandates, out of deference to public health guidance. Our business travel and attendance at conferences and other external meetings have been canceled. Some of us might be really busy with childcare b/c of our kids who are at home from school. But some others might have some slack in their schedules and might be climbing the walls for social interaction; there are only so many hours of streaming video we can endure from Netflix before we get antsy.
So… given all these factors, this might represent a good opportunity to request an informational interview via phone or video chat! Take this time to explore other careers that you’ve always been interested in. This might also be a good time to sign up for virtual career coaching because you’ll have time to invest in all of the different exercises.
Here are a few quick tips on requesting an informational interview — we’ll have a couple of other guest bloggers write more guidance in detail, but here’s some basic advice. A lot of it is common sense, but you’d be pretty surprised at how often people do NOT follow these pointers:
- Conduct thorough research on the organization and the individual before you approach them. Identify the right person/department within the organization to speak with.
- Make a clear and compelling case as to why you’d like to speak to them. How exactly does your background or interest relate to what they do?
- Especially if this person is very senior, ask if you can speak to one of their colleagues, if they don’t have time to spare.
- Give a flavor of the questions that you plan to ask them. Prepare questions in advance of your informational interview. Assure them that they’re not wasting their time in speaking with you.
- Be clear about how much time you’re asking for from them, e.g., 15-20 minutes.
- If you don’t get a response, follow up in a month. Persistence can pay off.
An early-career person just sent me a message cold via LinkedIn requesting a brief informational interview. It was a very thoughtful message in 2-3 paragraphs — he had clearly done research on my background and my employer, and made a compelling case for a conversation. I was happy to oblige. Also, in deference to the 100+ people who have granted me informational interviews, I’m happy to pay it forward, time allowing. The rule of thumb is that people are busy. Show them that you’ve done the work to show that you respect their time.
On the flip side, it drives me crazy when I get a LinkedIn message from someone whom I don’t know, asking for an informational interview, but it’s clear that they are just trying to find anyone to speak with who works at my organization. I’m not even in the department they’re really interested in. They also may not have done much research on my organization to understand what we do. It’s just scattershot. I think some career coaches would say to take a scattershot approach to requests for informational interviews –the theory is you increase your odds of getting an informational interview if you just randomly send out requests. I disagree with this spray-and-pray methodology — if you’re not doing the work to send out thoughtful, well-researched requests, it can be harmful and backfire on you because it shows you’re thoughtless and sloppy. Don’t do it. It’s a different story if you put in the work and send out 100 thoughtful requests, vs 100 random requests with no thought!