Email Becoming Tool of Choice Amongst College Students for Informational Interviewing

Informational interviews are one of the most effective methods of networking. Traditionally these interviews have been held face-to-face, but today’s college students are increasingly conducting such interviews via email.
University of Pittsburgh senior Emily Guzan, for example, used her college career service office’s database of alums and then emailed five who are working as attorneys, which is her chosen career path. All five responded and two of them invited her to shadow them in their offices.

While those who are used to networking face-to-face will likely abhor this trend, I believe that it is a positive development. With more and more of the population being highly mobile and increasingly communicating via instant messaging and email, this trend will help students connect with the best possible sources of information even if they’re not local. In the past, a student attending school in New York would have been very hard pressed to connect with someone in Los Angeles. With email, that distance no longer matters. The danger, however, is that networking that should take place face-to-face will shift to email. Too many job seekers hide behind their computers rather than risking the possibility of being rejected. As any good sales person knows though, a rejection brings you one step closer to an acceptance because it allows you to stop spending your time and other resources on leads that may be fruitless. So job seekers who spend all day sending emails and applying to advertised jobs are often doing so to help themselves feel that they’re busy and therefore being productive. Well, that’s just not the case. There is a huge difference between being busy and being productive. You can shuffle a whole lot of paper and not produce any value. When you do, you’re busy but not productive. So students who use email to help them establish real connections with people deserve our encouragement but those who use email to avoid face-to-face meetings deserve our encouragement to change their ways.
Source: Campus Career Counselor