Transcripts

Katherine Hansen PhD:
It's really exactly what it sounds like - you ask to interview an employer at a company where you're interested in working and you interview them rather than having them interview you.

Katherine Hansen, author of the book A Foot in the Door…

You know the key is to just ask for a very small amount of time (like twenty to thirty minutes) and to also make it clear that you're just on a fact-finding mission and you're not job hunting. You should never go into an informational interview with the idea of asking for a job. But very often that's actually what happens.

More often than not people are flattered that you would want their thoughts and opinions and are happy to meet with you.

If you feel like you have really, really good rapport with the person you're talking to you might ask, "Could you take a look at my resume and tell me how well it would fly if I were to apply for a job here?" - a lot of times they are very happy to do that.

Katherine is also a University professor and her experience with her students is that this technique works very well.

I surveyed them one semester and about 21% of them had gotten an internship or job offers. Now that's not a huge percentage but considering that the purpose of the informational interview is NOT to get an offer, I thought that was a pretty amazing percentage.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.