Followup after an informational interview
I’ve been doing informational phone appointments with people who are employed in the industry I hope to be in (financial services). I’ve been very lucky to have “chemistry” with all of my contacts. However, I am not sure how to follow up with them as my graduation date (and need for employment!) approaches.
How does one follow-up with contacts after an informational phone appointment? Does one ask for a job? Ask for more contacts? Ask if the contact knows of any jobs? Ask for an in-person meeting?
First of all, try to get the informational interview in person. Meeting face-to-face makes it more likely that you can get the person to feel invested in helping you. That’s the goal of an informational interview – that the person likes you so much that they help you get a job.
The person can like you in two ways. Either the person genuinely connects with you and wants you in their life, or the person recognizes that you’ll be a star and they want to be associated with you because it will make them look good.
In any case, you don’t want to ask directly for a job – if they really like you, and they ahve a job open, they’ll say something. Instead, figure out how they can help you get to a job. Advice, connections, things like that. The hardest part of making the informational interview matter is to be able to think of ways to get the person to help you after the interview is over. The questions are the hard part, but asking the questions and showing that you take action based on the answer – and then asking another question — this is the process that makes someone feel more and more invested in your success and therefore more and more willing to go out on a limb for you to get you a job.
Here are some posts about how to ask good questions.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2010/05/06/five-tips-for-asking-better-questions/
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/09/09/whats-a-good-question-whats-a-good-answer/
Good luck with your job hunt!
Penelope