Informational Interview

Asking a stranger for half an hour of their time feels presumptuous, which is why most people never do it. This section covers what an informational interview actually is, why the request works more often than you would guess, and the single rule that keeps it from backfiring.

An informational interview is a conversation you request with someone doing work you want to understand. The purpose is information: what the job is really like, how they got there, what they would tell someone entering the field now. You are the one asking questions. Nothing is being evaluated, there is no scorecard, and no offer exists to win or lose.

The rule that makes it work is that you do not ask for a job. The moment the conversation turns into a pitch, the person you are speaking with stops being a generous professional and starts being a gatekeeper, and the honest answers stop. Referrals do happen, but they happen afterward, offered rather than requested.

The request itself does most of the work. Keep it short, make it easy to say yes to, and make the ask specific.

• Say why them. Name the thing that made you reach out: a talk they gave, a path they took, a team they work on. Anything that proves you did not send fifty identical messages.
• Ask for a defined window. Twenty minutes is easy to grant. "Can I pick your brain sometime" is not.
• Say what you want to learn. Two concrete topics, so they know they can actually help.
• Offer their format. Call, video, coffee, or written answers if they prefer. Removing friction raises the yes rate.
• Make refusal easy. One line saying you understand if the timing does not work costs you nothing and makes the note read as respectful rather than transactional.

Alumni networks, former colleagues, and second-degree connections answer far more often than cold outreach. Start there before messaging strangers.

Prepare six to eight questions and expect to use four. The good ones are the ones only this person can answer.

• What does a normal week look like, as opposed to the job description?
• What surprised you most in your first six months here?
• What part of the work do people underestimate before they start?
• How did you get from where I am to where you are, and what would you skip?
• What skill are you glad you built early, and which one turned out not to matter?
• Who else should I be talking to?

That last question is the one that compounds. A career-changer moving from lab research into data work asked it at the end of every conversation, and four introductions later she was talking to someone on a team that was about to open a role. She never asked any of them for a job; by the time the opening existed, three people already knew her name.

Skip anything answered on the company website, and skip salary unless they raise it. Questions to ask in a real hiring conversation are a separate topic, grouped under interview types.

Send a note within a day. Reference one specific thing they said and what you are going to do about it, because that is what makes the message memorable rather than polite. If they suggested a person, a book or a course, say you followed the suggestion once you have.

Then keep a light thread going. A short update a few months later saying what came of the conversation costs you two minutes and is the reason people remember you when something opens up. Most informational interviews produce nothing immediately and some produce a referral a year later.

If the relationship does turn into a referral, have your resume current before you need it; the free builder is on the resume builder page. And when a real interview follows, practice for that separately, which is what the pages under mock interviews cover.