Work On It Wednesday: Informational Interview

By Emily Young MA ‘16

As college students, the best tool to network is informational interviews.  Informational interviews allow you to become well-informed about the industry you’re interested in and are a great way to develop some contacts in your field.  Top-level and mid-level executives rarely take calls from strangers, but for college students eager to learn there is an exception.  Being a USC student is a powerful brand to get your foot in the door, so use it to your advantage.

My Informational Interview Tips

1. Use the Trojan Family to Network

Reaching out to someone you don’t know for an informational interview can be a little intimidating, but remember the people you are reaching out to were once college students too.  Most are more than willing to help out a college student and explain their life story. If you’re nervous about reaching out to strangers, reach out to fellow Trojans.  Fellow Trojans are never strangers, they are family.

Send the person a friendly, concise email that gets right to the point.  Try something like:

 “I’m a student at University of Southern California interested in __________.  I realize that you are on a tight schedule and I would greatly appreciate any time that you could spare to chat with me. Thank you in advance for your help.”

2. Prepare Your Questions

If you are asking for someone’s time, you should invest the time to be prepared.  Look at the person’s LinkedIn for their experience. Research a few key facts about their industry work and see if you can find any articles they have written or interviews they have done.  Prepare open ended questions that demonstrate you’ve done research, but include some generic ones too.  Here are some of the generic questions I like to use:

• It’s 10:00 on Tuesday, what have you already done this morning to start the day?
• Day to day, what kinds of decisions do you make?
• Describe some of the toughest situations you’ve faced in this job.
• What do you see as major digital/ Mobile trends?  How is COMPANY preparing for those?
• How do you stay on top of trends?  Are there particular trade journals you read?
• What’s the one thing you learned in college that has impacted your career the most?
• Big differences between current and previous role? 
• How does a person progress in your field? 
• If your job progresses as you like, what would be the next step in your career?  Where do you see yourself in five years? 

3. Keep it Short

Most informational interviews are brief, 30 minutes.  If you’re getting loads of good info and don’t want the meeting to end, it’s important to be respectful of your interviewee’s time. So, when you have about 5 minutes left before your meeting is scheduled to end, casually mention that you want to be “mindful of her time” and note the time you have left. This gives her the opportunity to either extend the interview, or transition to a graceful conclusion.

4. Follow Up

One of the biggest mistakes students make with informational interviews is not following-up. After you send a thank you note, keep the connection alive.  I suggest emailing when you see news about the company: a new article, commercial etc. This will help keep you top of mind when the time comes.  Remember, you never know what doors she could open for you one day.

Now get out there and do some informational interviews!

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