You’ve just spent a half hour talking with and asking questions to Bob, the owner of Bob’s Plumbing. You now have a clear view of Bob’s company and how he goes to business. Thank Bob for spending time with you. Make sure you get one of Bob’s business cards and then ask him if he could recommend other people for you to talk with.

As soon as you can following the interview with Bob, make notes on what you learned. Also, pay attention to how the interview progressed. What seemed to work? What didn’t? Make a point to incorporate changes into your next interview.

Send Bob a thank you note. In order to have maximum impact, make sure that thank you note gets into the mail on the same day that you talked with Bob. This will require a little advanced planning but it is so worth it.  I guarantee that folks like Bob are not used to getting thank you notes from technicians. And this pertains to anyone who you informational interview with. Always send them a thank you note!

One side benefit of informational interviewing is that the more you do it, the easier it gets. You will notice your confidence grow. The upside is that when you go out for actual job interviews you’ll notice how much better you’ve gotten in the process. Prospective employers will notice this too!

You recently met Bob at Ohm Supply. Bob works for Sparks Mechanical, an electrical contractor. Bob dresses like a Marine and drives a brand new truck. You figure Sparks Mechanical is a pretty decent company, you’d like to learn more about it. So you ask Bob and he agreed to meet you one morning next week for coffee. Bob is a senior technician and a polished professional, so you don’t want to waste his time. When you meet with him, be prepared and keep the meeting to under one half an hour.

Here are links to two lists of questions that you might consider asking Bob: Your Manager & Your Employer.

You can talk with people who are already in the position that you are interested in or you can talk with the company’s owner-managers.

People in same position – You will learn the most from this group. You should concentrate most of your efforts with them. There is a ton of useful information available from people who are already doing what you plan on doing. Or if it is a position that you are thinking about, you will get a much more clear picture of its day in and day out activities.

Where do you find people to talk to? A good place to start is a trade association. For instance, if you are a HVAC tech, you would contact RSES. The folks who work at trade associations will gladly provide information. After all, they would like you to join their organization. They should be able to hook you up with a technician in your town who would enjoy helping you out.

Once you’ve done one informational interview, ask that person if he knows anyone else who you could talk to. My daughter once spent six months doing informational interviews, talking with over forty people. Each new contact came from someone that she had interviewed. We’ll spend more time on this part in the future.

Owner-Managers – When you go to talk with these folks remember, you are a student, you’re there to learn. Although you know a lot of stuff and probably busting at the seams to tell people in positions like these, don’t. Learn don’t tell.

In the future, we’ll break down each group and provide you with suggested questions to ask.

The term informational interviewing is a mouthful. Don’t worry about that. I am only using it to make sure the search engines can find us, because technically that is what you call it. You can also call it asking questions.

Let’s say that you’ve been driving 1969 Chargers all your life. Or at least in the summer time. But over a period of time, the 1970 Cutlass 422 has caught your fancy. Before you buy one however, you want to know more about it. It’s highly unlikely that you would just go out and buy one before you did some research. Even if you give yourself a thumbs up after performing general research into the 442, you still need to research out specific cars. You know this. I don’t have to tell you. Hell would freeze over before you buy the 442 without doing the research.

If you perform that much leg work prior to buying a car, don’t you think you should log some time to investigate the career, line of work and company that will provide satisfaction and food and rent and bills and vacations and, well, that 442? Sure you do!

A few cool things about informational interviewing:

• You are not interviewing for a job
• You are learning a ton of stuff
• A lot of people are getting to know you
• You are building a network of connections

Stay tuned and look for future posts beginning with Landing a New Job: Informational Interviewing…