Make the Most of Informational interviewing: Part II

by Katherine & Elizabeth Hirsh


In this, the second article in our series on informational interviewing, we will be discussing how to use your Strong Interest Inventory ^® results to maximize the return on your interviewing experience by helping you to gather data on those aspects of potential careers that are most important to your future success and satisfaction.

What is Informational Interviewing & Who Should Be Doing It?

To review, informational interviewing is a tool for gathering information about a particular job, field, industry or work setting by talking with people already working in that profession or organization. Your goal is to get an overview of both their typical workday – the tasks they perform, the skills that are required, the people with whom they work and the general environment or culture – as well as the path they took a to obtain their job and the opportunities and challenges they have encountered across the course of their career. Thus informational interviewing is appropriate at any age or life stage: those new to the job market, those in transition due to lay-offs or other life changes, those at mid-career and even those seeking an unpaid opportunity as part of a fulfilling retirement.

The Strong Interest Inventory and the Career Search Process

As you approach your career search, take advantage of the data in your Strong results to help you craft an effective plan for informational interviewing. You might want to start by examining your results on the six broad interest areas captured in the General Occupational Themes. Each of the General Occupational Themes suggests methods you might choose to use in your career search. How does knowing your Theme code provide a structure for approaching the career exploration process? If the Realistic theme is prominent in your code, look for a way to get a hands-on, experiential job preview of the career options that interest you. If the Investigative theme is prominent in your code, research the options that interest you in depth, following your curiosity. If the Artistic theme is prominent in your code, use your imagination to incorporate elegance and beauty into your resume, online professional profile, interview wardrobe, etc. If the Social theme is prominent in your code, consider a volunteer service role to sample potential career options. If the Enterprising theme is prominent in your code, tap into your love of networking to meet people who may be influential in occupations of interest. If the Conventional theme is prominent in your code, utilize your interest in setting up systems to organize all the necessary data for the job search. Pay close attention your top two or three themes and endeavor to craft a strategy that suits the overall pattern of your General Occupational Themes.  To make this more concrete, imagine your top three themes are Investigative, Artistic and Realistic. With this pattern, you could set out to investigate an option in depth, create an elegant resume that reflects your findings as well as your personal style, and use both of these to secure the opportunity to job shadow for a day.

It is also beneficial to utilize the information contained in your Personal Style Scales. These supply another layer of data to your career exploration process. How does knowing your Personal Style Scales provide a structure for approaching the career exploration process? If your Work Style, Leadership Style and Team Orientation scores indicate that you prefer working on your own, consider how you might carve out quiet time before and after your informational interviews to recharge and organize your thoughts. If your Work Style, Leadership Style and Team Orientation scores indicate that you prefer working with others, consider partnering with people going through similar changes for mutual benefit and support. If your Learning Environment score suggests that you prefer to get information from lectures and books, consider a trip to the library or listening to a webinar to learn more about potential options. If your Learning Environment score suggests you prefer learning by doing, consider work shadowing or hands-on, immersive workshops to learn more about potential options. If your Risk Taking score indicates that you prefer to make decisions cautiously and minimize risks, take time to consider who you already know who might help you make inroads into fields of interest as well as look into new occupations that have familiar aspects to jobs you have held in the past. If your Risk Taking score indicates that you prefer to make decisions quickly and find risks energizing, consider following your gut and jumping right into talking to new people and exploring options even if they are unrelated to anything you have tried before.

Getting the Most Out of Informational Interviewing

Each section of the Strong is helpful in structuring the career exploration process. One method is to start with the Occupational Scales. Use the information about your top ten occupations as a basis for deciding whom to contact for your informational interviews. You may want to use the O*Net database online at http://online.onetcenter.org to help you know more about each of your top ten occupations and thus approach potential interviewees more confidently. If you have difficulty finding people in each of your top ten careers to interview, you might want to turn to your results on the Basic Interest Scales and seek to interview people working in those more general areas (e.g., if you have difficulty finding a Public Relations Manager you might try to locate someone working in Marketing & Advertising or Writing & Mass Communication). Then, once the interviews have been arranged, you will want to ask questions to determine if the environments in each of these occupations would be a good fit for someone with your pattern of General Occupational Themes and Personal Style Scales. Here is a set of questions to get you started:

• Realistic – Do people in this job value tangible results, hands-on activities and action?
  
  
• Investigative – Do people in this job value analysis, independent work and expertise?
  
  
• Artistic – Do people in this job value imagination, creativity and self-expression?
  
  
• Social – Do people in this field value training and development, teamwork and service to others?
  
  
• Enterprising – Do people in this field value negotiation, competition and business acumen?
  
  
• Conventional – Do people in this field value accuracy, managing data and being well organized?
  
  
• Work Style – Do people in this field tend to work primarily on their own or with others?
  
  
• Learning Environment – Do people in this field tend to learn primarily through books and lectures or by doing?
  
  
• Leadership Style – Do people in this field tend to lead primarily by example or by explicitly taking charge?
  
  
• Risk Taking – Do people in this field tend to see risk taking primarily as uncomfortable or as energizing?
  
  
• Team Orientation – Do people in this field tend to approach tasks primarily as a solo effort or as a team effort?
  

Getting answers to these questions and trying out strategies outlined in this article should give you a greater awareness of who you are and how your interests fit with the occupations targeted in your career search. We hope that utilizing your Strong results in the informational interviewing process will help bring you closer to the career best suited to you!

Elizabeth & Katherine Hirsh

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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.