Knowing Yourself Makes Informational
Interviewing a Success: PART I

by Katherine & Elizabeth Hirsh

What is Informational Interviewing

Informational interviewing is an important tool in your career exploration and networking arsenal. An informational interview, simply put, is an interview where the goal is gathering information about a profession or organization rather than securing employment (although job offers can result from the meeting!). It is a fact-finding discussion where you talk with people already working in a particular role, field, industry, or work place about:

• the tasks they perform and the knowledge and skills that they use

• the path they took and the experience and qualifications required to obtain their job

• the kinds of people they serve, lead, and/or with whom they collaborate on the job 

• the sort of work environment and culture in which they work

• the joys and frustrations of doing their work, in their industry and for their organization
  
  

Your aim is to get an overview of both their typical workday as well as the variety of work situations, interactions and opportunities they have encountered across the course of their career.

 

Informational Interviewing is for Everyone

You don’t have to be fresh out of school to benefit from informational interviewing. It is a method that works for all ages and stages. Just starting out? Informational interviewing can help you learn more about specific jobs as well as the world of work in general. At mid-career? Your goal in informational interviewing might be to explore what it takes to secure a promotion or to investigate a lateral move within your organization. Laid off or downsized? Utilizing informational interviewing to survey new possibilities within or outside of your chosen field can be a great way to get back on track. Retired or near retirement? Informational interviewing can be helpful in the design of an encore career or to discover opportunities to use your talents as a volunteer (where one might argue the need for satisfaction is even higher given you are not being paid!). Finally, using results from Psychometrics assessments can streamline and bolster your interviews by ensuring a meaningful exchange because you will be armed with self-knowledge. Here we will begin by exploring the MBTI ^® tool in informational interviewing and a subsequent article will cover the Strong Interest Inventory ^® in relation to this topic.

 

The MBTI ^® Tool and the Career Search Process

Before setting up your informational interview, use the gifts of your MBTI preferences to help you better approach the career search process. How does knowing your MBTI preferences provide a structure for approaching career change? If you have a preference for Extraversion, consider with whom you could discuss your options. If you have a preference for Introversion, consider a few select options in depth. If you have a preference for Sensing, look at your current activities, skills and interests for what they suggest about career options to investigate. If you have a preference for Intuition, look at your dreams, hunches and off-the-wall ideas for clues about career options to explore. If you have a preference for Thinking, ask yourself whether particular career choices have more positives than negatives. If you have a preference for Feeling, ask yourself whether particular career choices feel right. If you have a preference for Judging, devise a routine to add order and structure to your career search. If you have a preference for Perceiving, leave yourself room to respond to new information, chance meetings, and spontaneous opportunities to keep your career search fluid.  Use these ideas to tailor your strategy to your preferences as well as to try out methods favored by those who have preferences opposite to your own. We recommend the occasional foray into less preferred territory to maximize your chances for success as well as infuse energy into your career search.

Now that you know something about how your preferences relate to your career search process it’s good to think about what you hope to accomplish at your informational interviews. No matter what your MBTI type, creating some basic interviewing goals in advance will help you get the most out of each interaction.

 

Getting the Most Out of Informational Interviewing

One way to ensure that you maximize the benefits you get out of each interview is to think about your goals before you start. Here are a few ideas of general goals you might establish for yourself:

• I want to learn more about ______ (Fill in topic, e.g., possibilities for promotion)

• I want to meet people who ______ (Fill in characteristic, skill, attitude, role, e.g., have retired before age 50)

• I want get information on where I might be able to use my ______ (Fill in experience, skill, talent, e.g., organizing events)

• I want to discuss my passion for ______ (Fill in idea, approach, belief or value, e.g., technology)
  
  

In addition to furthering your general interviewing goals during your meetings, you may want to ask questions targeted at learning if your MBTI preferences would be a good fit for work environments of interest. Here are eight questions to get you started, one for each of the eight MBTI preferences:

• Extraversion – Do people in this job value conversation, group work, and action?

• Introversion – Do people in this job value autonomy, independent work, and in-depth consideration?

• Sensing – Do people in this job value practicality, common sense, and making the most of the present moment?

• Intuition – Do people in this field value imagination, insight, and reaching toward an ideal future?

• Thinking – Do people in this field value objectivity, critical analysis, and data?

• Feeling – Do people in this field value warmth, appreciation, and relationships?

• Judging – Do people in this field value schedules, order, and decisiveness?

• Perceiving – Do people in this field value freedom, adaptability, and openness?
  
  

If you find that an environment of interest does not complement your preferences, you still may want to pursue work there. Being different will likely be a challenge and yet, if you are up to it, your uniqueness may be just what is needed to provide that particular industry with perspective, balance, and renewed vigor. Whatever your four-letter type code, we hope that the ideas described in this article will help to make your career search more surefooted and fun!

Katherine & Elizabeth Hirsh

Be sure to look out for the next article in this series on the Strong Interest Inventory for more ways to make the most of your informational interviewing.

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BIO
Katherine W. Hirsh, DPhil and Elizabeth Hirsh, MS have been using psychological type in coaching, management consulting, counseling, education, and personal, professional and faculty development for nearly twenty years. They are co-authors of Introduction to Type ^® and Decision Making, and, with Sandra Krebs Hirsh, Introduction to Type^® and Teams and the forthcoming third edition of The MBTI ^® Teambuilding Program: Leader’s Resource Guide. Katherine's preferences are for INTP. Elizabeth's preferences are for INFP.