An informational interview is one of the most underused tools in a job search, and it is underused almost entirely because people do not know how to ask for one. They either do not ask at all, convinced the request is an imposition, or they ask in a way that signals they are actually angling for a job offer and get turned down before the conversation begins. Getting this right — the ask and the meeting itself — is a learnable skill, and it pays off in ways that are disproportionate to the effort.

What an Informational Interview Actually Is

Let us be precise about what you are requesting. An informational interview is a conversation, typically 20 to 30 minutes, in which you ask someone about their career path, their current work, and their industry — not about job openings, not about getting hired. The explicit purpose is information and perspective. The implicit value, for both parties, is relationship-building. You learn something useful. The other person gets to talk about their work to someone who is genuinely curious about it. That is a reasonable exchange. The confusion arises because people use informational interviews as thinly veiled job auditions, which makes everyone uncomfortable and produces worse information. When the real agenda is transparent, it poisons the conversation. The professionals who get the most out of informational interviews are the ones who actually mean what they say — they are there to learn, not to audition.

How to Make the Ask

The ask has three components: who you are, why you are reaching out to this specific person, and what you are requesting. Keep it short. Most outreach messages that fail are too long, too vague, or both. Who you are does not require a biography — one sentence establishing context is enough. Why this specific person matters a great deal: people respond to specificity. "I came across your piece on supply chain restructuring and found your framework for vendor tiering genuinely useful" lands differently than "I admire your career." The more specific you are about what drew you to them, the more clearly you signal that you have done your homework and are not sending the same message to fifty people. The request should be explicit and bounded. Ask for 20 to 25 minutes, offer flexibility on timing and format, and make it easy to say yes. A direct calendar link, if you have one, removes friction. And make the purpose clear: you want to learn about their experience and perspective, not ask for a job. Research from Stanford's Graduate School of Business tracking alumni networking behavior found that cold outreach messages citing a specific piece of the recipient's work had a response rate nearly three times higher than generic admiration messages. Specificity is not flattery — it is evidence of genuine interest, which people can distinguish.

Preparing for the Conversation

Going in underprepared wastes both parties' time and makes you forgettable. Before the meeting, know their career trajectory well enough to ask informed questions about specific transitions. Know something about their organization beyond what the homepage says. Have a clear sense of what you actually want to understand by the end of the conversation — not a list of twenty questions, but two or three themes you care about. Good questions are open-ended and invite reflection rather than yes/no answers. What drew you to this area of work? What do you wish you had known when you were making the transition you made? What do you think is changing fastest in this industry? These questions give the other person something to think about, and thinking out loud with a curious audience is something most people enjoy.

The Tangent Worth Acknowledging

There is something a little odd about the informational interview as a professional norm: it is essentially a ritual in which both parties pretend the subtext does not exist. The person asking usually hopes the conversation will eventually lead somewhere useful professionally. The person being asked usually knows this. The convention of treating it as purely an information exchange can feel performative. And yet the convention serves a purpose — it removes pressure from both sides and creates the conditions for a more honest conversation than a job interview allows. The pretense, in this case, makes the exchange more useful, not less.

Following Up

Send a thank-you message within 24 hours. It should be specific — reference something from the conversation, not just a generic expression of gratitude. If they mentioned a resource, follow up on whether you looked at it. If they suggested a name, let them know you reached out. Small follow-through signals that the conversation meant something to you, which is what converts a single meeting into a lasting professional relationship. Do not ask for a job in the follow-up. If an opportunity exists, they will surface it. Your job is to be memorable for the right reasons.