The Benefits of Informational Interviewing

How to Try On Careers Before You Decide Which Ones to Pursue

Before you go and get all the training or education it requires, or before you go job-hunting for that career, you need to try it on.

This is exactly analogous to shopping at a clothing store and trying on different suits (or dresses) that you see in their window or on their racks. Why do you try them on? Well, the suits or dresses that look terrific in the window don’t always look so hot when you see them on you. The clothes don’t hang quite right, etc.

It’s the same with careers. Ones that sound terrific in books or in your imagination don’t always look so great when you actually see them up close and personal.

What you want of course is a career that looks terrific—in the window, and also on you. So this is where you need to go talk to people who are already doing the kind of job or career that you’re thinking about. The website LinkedIn should be invaluable to you, in locating the names of such people.

Once you find them, if they live nearby ask for twenty minutes of their time face to face—Starbucks?—and keep to your word, unless during the chat they insist they want to go on talking. Some workers—not all—are desperate to find someone who will actually listen to them; you may come as an answer to their prayers.

Here are some questions that will help when you’re talking with workers who are actually doing the career or job you think you might like to do:

• “How did you get into this work?”

• “What do you like the most about it?”

• “What do you like the least about it?”

• And, “Where else could I find people who do this kind of work?” (You should always ask them for more than one name, here, so that if you run into a dead end at any point, you can easily go visit the other name[s] they suggested.)

If at any point in these informational interviews with workers, it becomes more and more clear to you that this career, occupation, or job you are exploring definitely doesn’t fit you, then the last question (above) gets turned into a different kind of inquiry:

• “Do you have any ideas as to who else I could talk to—about my skills and special knowledges or interests—who might know what other careers use the same skills and knowledge?” If they come up with names, go visit the people they suggest. If they can’t think of anyone, ask them, “If you don’t know of anyone, who do you think might know?”

Sooner or later, as you do this informational interviewing with workers, you’ll find a career that fits you just fine. It uses your favorite skills. It employs your favorite special knowledges or fields of interest. Okay, now you must ask how much training, etc., it takes, to get into that field or career. You ask the same people you have been talking to, previously.

More times than not, you will hear bad news. They will tell you something like: “In order to be hired for this job, you have to have a master’s degree and ten years’ experience at it.”

Is that so? Keep in mind that no matter how many people tell you that such-and-such are the rules about getting into a particular occupation, and there are no exceptions—believe me there are exceptions to almost every rule, except for those few professions that have rigid entrance examinations as, say, medicine or law. Otherwise, somebody has figured out a way around the rules. You want to find out who these people are, and go talk to them, to find out how they did it.

So, in your informational interviewing, you press deeper; you search for exceptions:

“Yes, but do you know of anyone in this field who got into it without that master’s degree, and ten years’ experience?

“And where might I find him or her?

“And if you don’t know of any such person, who do you think might know?”

In the end, maybe—just maybe—you can’t find any exceptions. It’s not that they aren’t out there; it’s just that you don’t know how to find them. So, what do you do when everyone tells you that such and such a career takes years to prepare for, and you can’t find anyone who took a shortcut? What then?

Good news. Every professional specialty has one or more shadow professions, which require much less training. For example, instead of becoming a doctor, you can go into paramedical work; instead of becoming a lawyer, you can go into paralegal work; instead of becoming a licensed career counselor, you can become a career coach. There is always a way to get close, at least, to what you dream of.

How to Find Out What Kinds of Organizations Have Such Jobs

Before you think of individual places where you might like to work, it is helpful to stop and think of all the kinds of places where one might get hired, so you can be sure you’re casting the widest net possible. (A fisherman’s metaphor, of course.)

Let’s take an example. Suppose in your new career you want to be a teacher. You must then ask yourself: “What kinds of places hire teachers?” You might answer, “Just schools”—and finding that schools in your geographical area have no openings, you might say, “Well, there are no jobs for people in this career.”

But wait a minute! There are countless other kinds of organizations and agencies out there, besides schools, that employ teachers. For example, corporate training and educational departments, workshop sponsors, foundations, private research firms, educational consultants, teachers’ associations, professional and trade societies, military bases, state and local councils on higher education, fire and police training academies, and so on and so forth.

“Kinds of places” also means places with different hiring options, besides full-time, such as:

• places that would employ you part-time (maybe you’ll end up

deciding, or having, to hold down two or even three part-time

jobs, which together add up to one full-time job);

• places that take temporary workers, on assignment for one project

at a time;

• places that take consultants, one project at a time;

• places that operate primarily with volunteers, etc.;

• places that are nonprofit;

• places that are for-profit;

• and, don’t forget, places that you yourself could start up, should you decide to be your own boss.

During this interviewing for information, you should not only talk to people who can give you a broad overview of the career that you are considering. You should also talk with actual workers in those kinds of organizations, who can tell you in more detail what the tasks are in the kinds of organizations that interest you.

How to Find Out the Names of Particular Places That Interest You

As you interview workers about their jobs or careers, somebody will probably innocently mention, somewhere along the way, actual names of organizations that have such kind of workers—plus what’s good or bad about the place. This is important information for you. Jot it all down. Keep notes religiously!

But you will want to supplement what they have told you, by seeking out other people to whom you can simply say: “I’m interested in this kind of organization, because I want to do this kind of work; do you know of particular places like that, that I might investigate? And if so, where they are located?” Use face-to-face interviews, use LinkedIn, use the Yellow Pages, use search engines, to try to find the answer(s) to that question. Incidentally, you must not care, at this point, if they have known vacancies or not. The only question that should concern you for the moment is whether or not the place looks interesting, or even intriguing to you. (The only caveat is that if times are still tough, you will probably want to modify your search to the extent that you investigate smaller places—100 or fewer employees—rather than larger; and newer places, rather than older.) But for a successful job-hunt you should choose places based on your interest in them, and not wait to choose places until you’ve heard they have a vacancy. Vacancies can suddenly open up in a moment, and without warning. One job-hunter I know approached a place at 11:00 in the morning, and got the exact job he wanted; the vacancy had opened up at 9:30, when the previous employee suddenly quit and walked out.

Reprinted with Permission from What Color Is Your Parachute? 2013: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career Changers by Richard N. Bolles (Ten Speed Press, 2012)

Richard N. Bolles invented the informational interview (now as integral to the job search as the job interview itself.) He is author of the world’s best-selling job-hunting book What Color Is Your Parachute?, and has led the career development field for more than forty years. A member of Mensa and the Society for Human Resource Management, he has been the keynote speaker at hundreds of conferences. Bolles was trained in chemical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and holds a bachelor’s degree cum laude in physics from Harvard University, a master’s in sacred theology from General Theological (Episcopal) Seminary in New York City, and three honorary doctorates. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Marci. Visit www.jobhuntersbible.com. The What Color Is Your Parachute? Job-Hunter’s Workbook Tablet Edition, a new digital version of the core self-inventory exercise that has made What Color Is Your Parachute? a household name, is now available in iTunes and the NOOK Store.