Informational Interview Guide

We highly encourage you to interview a professional in your specific career field of interest. In these informal conversations, ask for feedback, and discuss questions that arose over the course of completing the exercise. This Informational Interview Guide provides tips and sample emails, questions to prompt the discussion, and information about the benefits of getting feedback from a professional.

Use this guide will help you understand what to expect, how to set up and close an informational interview, of course, how to write the Thank You note.

Sample

YOU / PRO

Spend 10-15 minutes asking the professional questions.

ME

Spend 5 minutes talking about yourself. The pro will likely want to know your motivation for setting up the interview and what you hope to gain.

WE

Then move into the “we” part of the conversation where you ask them specific questions about the job sim for 10 minutes. It is “we” because you’ll go through the job sim, in essence. For example, you could say: “In completing the job sim, I used these websites – which websites do you use?” Additional questions:

  • Which resources do you find useful for X application?

  • Is this task typically performed in your company?

  • Do you find yourself doing this task often in your first sixth months?

  • How often do you work on this task in teams?

  • What do you find challenging about these types of tasks?

Additional Resources.