Informational Interviews

I’ve often talked about the benefits of the informational interview and, in fact, how my younger son got his summer job by requesting an informational interview. For those of you who don’t know what they are, they are interviews conducted by folks who are looking to learn more about certain companies or roles or are simply looking for career guidance and advice.

They are ideal for students who are then able to not only learn more about certain companies and certain positions within those companies (and often gain valuable advice!) but who can then grow their professional networks.

The assignment I gave my Career Planning and Development class at George Brown College was to conduct an informational interview and then provide me with their questions, answers and a summary.

In today’s class, they broke into groups to discuss key outcomes of their interviews and then relate them to the rest of the class. The students interviewed a wide cross section of companies and industries and roles. It was interesting to hear that some of the most interesting or helpful questions centered around what it takes to be successful in their roles, why they were attracted to their companies and what advice they would give to a college student at this point in their career. One student put it best when he asked “what is the number one piece of advice you’d be willing to give a striving young professional interested in your field of work?”

Most took away a better sense of the type of roles that exist in their field of study but, most importantly, what it takes to get there. This will certainly help them as they continue to build out their career plans and strive to attain their ultimate goals.

All found this assignment useful (or at least that’s what they told me!) and helped many of them build up the confidence required to ask professionals for a meeting and to then meet with them to gain insight into their chosen professions. Now, don’t stop at just this one informational interview. Go out there and make it a key part of your job search strategy and a key component as you build out your professional network!