Informational Interviews

The informational interview is an opportunity to learn about a career path, employer and/or industry. Informational interviews are also a networking strategy that expand and engage your network. Informational interviews cover topics that can’t easily be found online and help you to learn first-hand about a job directly from someone who performs or has performed the tasks daily.

Your Career Coach at the Pomerantz Career Center can help you brainstorm potential people to interview. Try searching specifically for University of Iowa alumni on LinkedIn. Friends, parents, friends’ parents, and parents’ friends are also potential sources of locating people who might be willing to participate in an informational interview with you.

Click the “hot spots” in the below image for advice on how to ask for an informational interview.

Before your informational interview, research your contact, organization and career field and prepare questions. Consider what you want to learn during the interview and select questions accordingly. Use the tool below to generate a question list.

Handshake Student Messaging 

Want to reach out to some students who have interned before? Handshake’s Student Messaging function is a great way to find Hawkeyes and students from other schools to do informational interviews with regarding their experience.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=twwIdZXdTpE%3Ffeature%3Dyoutu