search after meeting with an individual in a position similar to the one she was considering. She felt that she could then say that she was clearly qualified for the job,” Goodman notes.

“Informational interviewing was like a ticket to the real world of business formality,” observes Pulat Tillaboyev, a senior finance major who left his native Uzbekistan to study in Florida . “I had a chance to ‘get into the interviewer's skin' to get more prepared for job interviews.” Laura Nigro, a market researcher for the Automobile Association of America, Heathrow , Florida , echoes the job-interview preparation advantage. “Informational interviews better prepared me to ask questions when I was interviewed for the job I'm in now,” Nigro says.

Learning to ask good question requires research. “Ideally, [students] should prepare specific questions that indicate substantive knowledge of an industry or career path, with the majority of the questions focused on topics that cannot be researched on the Internet,” cautions Janet Scarborough of Bridgeway Career Development, Seattle, Washington. “Busy professionals are annoyed by questions like, ‘What is the median income in your field?' when such information is readily available from Web sites,” Scarborough advises.

Job and internship offers often result from informational interviews, even though getting offers is not their purpose. “Whenever we assign students to complete an Informational Interview as part of a class assignment, they often come back to class announcing the job offers they received,” says Nancy Nish, director of the career center at the University of Nebraska at Omaha . Michelle Watson, career counselor at Lehigh University , Lehigh , Pennsylvania , has a similar tale: “I had a sophomore finance major set up informational interviews with various alumni at TV/broadcasting networks,” Watson recalls. “She ended up landing a great internship at ‘Good Morning America' and even got to meet Diane Sawyer.”

Katharine Hansen is author of A Foot in the Door: Networking Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (Ten Speed Press, 2000, $14.95). Hansen also authored Dynamic Cover Letters for New Graduates (1998) and is co-author (with Randall S. Hansen) of Dynamic Cover Letters (1995), and Write Your Way to a Higher GPA (1997), all published by Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA. She is editor of QuintZine, an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and content provider for the Quintessential Careers Web site ( http://www.quintcareers.com/ ) published by her partner, Dr. Randall Hansen.

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