Reinventing You. Dorie Clark
Reading is, of course, another main research channel. You can take a page from Bill Gates who, as described by Steven Johnson in his excellent Where Good Ideas Come From, takes two weeklong “reading vacations” each year, where he plunges into the stack he’s been collecting. So save up your list of titles (from friends’ recommendations, reviews in industry magazines, or Amazon’s algorithms) and make sure you’re conversant with the leading books in your field before you start networking with people.
There are four immediate benefits. First, particularly if you’re diving into biographies or memoirs, you can get a better sense of whether or not a given field is for you (Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker, for instance, has given generations a taste of life on Wall Street). Second, your immersion will help you master the terminology; the jargon thicket can be dense in some fields, and you’ll want to sound credible. Third, you may pick up some fun anecdotes to share as you’re schmoozing, which can help you grease the wheels of social interaction.
Finally, you’ll be able to ask better, more-informed questions once you start meeting with other professionals to talk about your goals. Stein tells her clients, “If one of the things they’re exploring is being a lawyer, I don’t want them going to a lawyer and asking a dumb question like ‘What’s it like to be a lawyer?’” Executive coach Michael Melcher agrees: “You want to show that you’ve done your homework—that you’ve taken it as far as possible before talking with the person,” and urges people to consider the “highest and best use” of the person they’re interviewing. In other words, if you can find out certain information online or through books, don’t waste a professional’s time with it. You want to ask the person more sophisticated, refined questions (instead of “Where can I go for training?” think “I’d like your advice on choosing between two different revenue models”).
Try This
Make a list of the people you think are doing the most interesting things (anyone from famous business leaders to your neighbor who lived in Bangkok for a year).
Stalk their bios online. You can usually find them on the “about” page of their company’s website, but you may also have to do some detective work. If they’re well-known, read news articles to familiarize yourself with their career progression.
Identify patterns. If every person you admire is a Rotarian, maybe you should think about joining. If they all raise money to fight breast cancer, you can build a solid network by pitching in.
Brainstorm a tentative list of goals, based on your idols. You can refine them later (and we’ll work together to figure out the “how”). But now’s the time to think big: visiting at least fifty countries, getting your own radio talk show, raising a million dollars for charity, being named partner, or whatever most appeals to you.
Informational Interviews
Armed with your behind-the-scenes research, you’re finally ready to talk shop with actual experts. Informational interviews are an unbeatable opportunity to network with people who are doing what you want to do, to ask real-time questions about what their profession is like, and to weed out bad choices. (Friends of friends and your alumni network are usually the best starting places for people to meet with.)
Karen Landolt, a corporate attorney who transitioned to running a university career services office, requires her students to conduct at least four informational interviews and report back on them. She recalls, “I’d have people come to me and say, ‘I want to work at Goldman Sachs,’ and I’d say, ‘Great, who have you talked to there?’ They’d say no one, but they make a lot of money. And I’d say ‘Yes, but they work 120 hours a week—and have you talked to anyone at 3 a.m.?’”
There’s a risk to informational interviews, however, that most people don’t recognize: if you don’t know how to do them well, you can torpedo the relationship if you don’t make a good first impression. Here are six steps to follow.
Step 1: Be Clear about the Help You’re Asking For
As a favor to friends, I’ll sometimes do informational interviews with folks they know who are breaking into the workforce or looking to change jobs. The people are generally delightful, and I’d love to help them, but many are so vague that I honestly don’t know how. When you need a job and aren’t totally sure what you want, it can seem like a good strategy to leave yourself open to fate. “I’d like something in communications.” Well, yes . . . but what kind of communications job? Marketing? Advertising? Public relations? For a nonprofit? A big corporation? In health care? Consumer products? It becomes a monumental task to even think about how to provide assistance.
It’s far easier to help people with specific, targeted requests. Francine, who took a marketing class I taught at Tufts University, asked for advice on getting “a job in marketing for a food-related business.” Thanks to her specificity, it was immediately apparent how I could help. I set her up with informational interviews with my friend Stephen, a restaurant consultant, and Larry, who ran an artisanal chocolate company. She ended up helping Larry with some product demonstrations and he connected her with an internship.
But what if you aren’t sure what you want or you’re interested in multiple potential careers? Just make something up for now. Being specific will expand your options, not limit them. People are likely to say, “I don’t know anyone in New England archaeology, but if you like historic preservation, I know someone who works at the Victorian Society.” You want to paint a picture so clear that your contacts are thinking about real-life people they know who can help you.
Finally, a caveat—you’re likely to hurt your cause if your informational interview is actually a bait and switch. Don’t call up your contacts for a casual get-together, only to surprise them with the news that you, too, want to get into their field. Instead, be up front about your motives and they’ll likely say yes.
Step 2: Respect the Fact That They’re Doing You a Favor
Let’s face it: you’re the one asking for someone else’s time, so you want to make it very convenient for him. Let him pick the date, time, and location, and be sure to pay for his drink or meal. (I’ve heard some friends who are unemployed grouse about spending money taking out folks who are earning a healthy paycheck, which is exactly the wrong perspective. Their hourly rate is probably high enough that it’s costing them hundreds of dollars in lost productivity to meet with you. The least you can do is buy them a damn cup of coffee.)
You also want be sure you’re not misusing their generosity by taking too much time. Says Landolt, who estimates she’s done well over a hundred informational interviews in the past decade, “If they say they have twenty minutes, I’ll keep track. I’ll say, ‘It’s been twenty minutes, and if you have more time, I have more questions, but if not, I want to respect your time.’”
Step 3: Ask the Right Questions
Here’s the wrong one: do you have any jobs for me? Because if they don’t, it’ll shut down the discussion permanently. Good questions reflect a basic understanding of the field (you’re not bothering them with banal questions) and focus on their lived experience, so you can get a sense of what their job is really like. Stein suggests questions like:
What is your typical day like? Typical week? (And if there’s no such thing, ask them to describe the most recent.)
What do you like most and least about your job?
What does it take to be successful in this field? In this company?
What is the average salary range at this level?
I’m planning the following steps toward obtaining a job in this field (name them). Have I overlooked any strategy or resource you think might be helpful?
Step 4: Leave with Other Names