Conducting an Informational Interview - A bag of surprises!

My calendar invite said 'Catch-Up'. It was scheduled for 30 mins. I thought it was going to be a conversation where the candidate would walk me through her work experience. Since it wasn't an interview, I was under-prepared for what was to come. What expanded to a 55-minute conversation really opened me up to surprises, multiple concepts, and the best part - deep reflections!

We were 20 minutes into the conversation when I was told that this was an 'Informational Interview'. Should I have known this earlier? Perhaps. But, I was glad to learn about this enriching concept this way, completely experientially! So here is a gist of what to know, expect, and do as an INTERVIEWER in an Informational Interview.

These 5 components stand out - Candidate Profile, Open Sharing, Conversations, Timing, & Honest Reflection

1.    Candidate Profile - Firstly, this style of interview works with mid to senior-level hires. The format requires the person to have enough work experience which allows them to understand their own working style, their professional values, and a broad vision of what makes them tick. A corpus of work to refer back to and demonstrate is an added bonus!

2.    Be ready to share openly - From providing a detailed self-introduction to sharing values & passions that drive us in our own careers, I understood that the openness of our sharing creates the space for the candidate to open up. Openness to sharing sets the tone for having a truly honest conversation. The onus of building this openness is on the interviewer, through active sharing of history - balancing professional & personal elements.

3.    Conversations are at the heart of an Informational Interview - The goal of the II is to have conversations in order to understand. Hence ask, listen, appreciate and repeat. I started off with a genuine appreciation of the resume of the candidate, which was wonderfully unique. Also, the candidate is an avid blogger. My first real conversation with her was sharing that the skill and discipline of blogging is what I lack and wish to learn from her. This really opened up our conversation towards what we wish to do, what our working styles are, what motivates us at work, what our year ahead looks like etc. If you notice, all of these topics were a result of two-way sharing; in essence a real conversation. Each topic was address by both of us, with honesty.

4.    Timing - Its most essential to understand, for the lack of a better term, the professional-personal timing which the candidate brings to the table. Informational Interviews are often conducted after networking events, chance meetings or connections over social media to explore professional possibilities. For women returning to the workforce, for people changing careers, job roles or aftre traumatic work experinece, I belive an Informational Interview fits perfectly. The heart of the Informational Interview, as I see it, is empathy, understanding and exploration. Hence, talk about what is leading up to this conversation, WHY is this interview even needed in the larger professional-personal landscape of the candidate.

5.    Reflection - I am a self-proclaimed reflection junkie! I jump at it at any given opportunity. So when the candidate started asking solid, deep questions about my working style, leadership style, team management practices, work ethic, content development philosophy and the like, I was in self-exploratory heaven! Since I was underprepared for this experience, my responses surprised me. It created a small space for self-appreciation. Also, I genuinely enjoyed the reflections shared by the candidate too about her work ethic, how we are different in our approach to work (she loved chasing deadlines, while I love preparing to the T), what team work and mental health means to us during the pandemic.

In all, an Informational Interview is a two-way process. If you invite yourselves to be truly open and exploratory, the experience can offer a lot more than information about the candidate. To me, it is a wake-up call to write more - to gain back the keenness and discipline to make sense of my professional growth on digital paper.

Hope you find your inspiration in the most unexpected ways, this pandemic!