DISCUSSION: Informational interviewing

Reflect on recent career assignments

This week in your discussion, you will talk a bit about how your informational interviews went -- or what you are hoping to achieve if you haven't had your interview yet.

Your TA may gather students up into small groups to discuss the informational interview assignment, ensuring that each small group has at least one student who had finished the assignment by then (if possible).  The students would first talk about how they found their interiewee -- what kind of techniques and social networks they used, and which ones didn’t work well -- and then the students who completed their interviews would talk about one surprising thing they learned.  Bringing it back to the whole group, your TA may ask the students who completed their interviews to give some advice to students who hadn’t done them yet -- “what’s one thing you realize know that someone doing this for the first time should know?”  Or “what questions worked best?”

As a bonus, here is a short video where L&S alumni talk about informational interviewing as a job search strategy: