Informational Interviews: How to Ask for One and What to Ask

An informational interview is a short conversation, usually 20 to 30 minutes, in which you ask someone who does a job you are considering what the work is like and how they got there. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its career guide, says plainly what it is for: finding out whether a career fits your interests, skills and personality, with no job on the table.¹ It tends to go best when you talk less than you expect to. Harvard researchers led by Karen Huang reported in 2017 that strangers who asked more questions, especially follow-ups, were better liked.² Five steps cover the whole sequence:

1. Choose people a few steps ahead of you
2. Send a short request that names the time
3. Prepare about ten questions, grouped by purpose
4. Run the conversation and end on time
5. Thank them, then report back

What is an informational interview?

An informational interview is a brief meeting between a person investigating a career and a person working in it, as the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) defines it in a 2010 guide that credits the term to the American career writer Richard Bolles. Many people agree to one, the guide explains, because they like talking about their work, want good people to join their profession, or found their own careers this way.¹

Nobody is hiring, which is what sets it apart from a job interview. Yale’s Office of Career Strategy says a conversation like this can lead to a job offer, though that is not the point; the focus is the person’s organization, their role and how they reached it.³

The purpose of an informational interview is not to get a job.

Asking tends to feel harder than it is. In experiments Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake published in 2008 with Columbia University students and US charity fundraisers, people asking others for help expected fewer yeses than they got.⁴ Half an hour is a bigger favor than most of those they tested, so expect some refusals and read each as a comment on the other person’s time.

A nurse curious about clinical research could read job ads for a month and still not know whether she would enjoy the paperwork; one talk with a research nurse tells her what an ordinary week holds. Save these conversations for the questions only someone inside the job can answer.

How to ask for an informational interview

Ask someone a few steps ahead of you in the work you want, with a brief note covering who you are, why you picked them and how much of their time you want. Yale’s Office of Career Strategy recommends asking for 20 to 30 minutes by video, phone or in person, and lists family, friends, professors, alumni and LinkedIn as places to find people.³ If your list of names is short, begin with starting a professional network with few contacts.

1. Choose people a few steps ahead of you

The BLS guide recommends seeking out people doing the job itself rather than human resources staff, at the level you would enter, so a newcomer learns more from people near entry level than from their supervisors. It also notes that people are more willing to talk to someone they have a connection with, and that a mutual acquaintance can make the first request for you.¹

In a 2021 Harvard Business Review article, Sean O’Keefe suggests people about five to ten years further into their careers, who may be in a position to hire at entry level.⁵ A recent hire can tell you how they got in; someone further on can describe where the field is going. Acquaintances count, and Granovetter’s research on weak ties and job changers makes the classic case for asking them; so do former colleagues you have lost touch with for years.

2. Send a short request that names the time

O’Keefe recommends one sentence on who you are, one on why this particular person could help, and an offer to fit around their schedule.⁵ Add how you found their name and how long you would like, and make the request easy to answer in one reply.

If nobody replies, the BLS guide treats three attempts as a good rule of thumb before moving to the next name, and suggests asking anyone who cannot help whether they know someone who might.¹ Leave a few days to a week between messages to a busy person; that spacing is our suggestion, untested.

What questions should you ask in an informational interview?

Ask open questions that only someone inside the job can answer, about their path, their ordinary week, the skills that matter, hindsight and who else to meet. The BLS guide suggests choosing about ten that interest you most, because a single meeting has no room for more.¹

3. Prepare about ten questions, grouped by purpose

Two questions for each of five purposes gives you ten. All ten below adapt questions from the list Yale’s Office of Career Strategy gives its students, which also advises open questions over yes-or-no ones and asking about typical starting salaries rather than the person’s own pay.³

• Their path. “How did you get started in this field, and is that typical?” and “How did you choose your specialty?”
• The work. “What does a typical week look like?” and “What are the greatest frustrations of the job?”
• Skills. “Which skills and qualities matter most for success here?” and “What training would best prepare someone like me?”
• Hindsight. “What do you wish you had known when you were starting out?” and “Looking back, would you do anything differently?”
• Next people. “Who else would you recommend I talk to?” and “Which professional groups would help me meet people in this field?”

1. Their path: how they got into the field and moved from one role to the next
2. The work: what a typical week holds, and the hardest or most frustrating parts
3. Skills: which skills matter most, and what a hiring manager might worry about in your background
4. Hindsight: what they wish they had known at the start, and what is changing in the field
5. Next people: who else you should talk to, and whether you may mention their name

Grouping lets you drop a whole purpose when time runs short. O’Keefe suggests writing the questions in order of priority and leaving the script when the conversation goes somewhere useful, since learning and building the relationship matter more than finishing the list.⁵

How you respond to the answers matters as much as the list.

The study

Moderate evidence

Nine questions or four: the Harvard chat experiment (2017)

In the first study, 199 pairs of strangers chatted online for 15 minutes in a university behavioral lab. In each pair, one person was privately instructed to ask either nine or more questions or four or fewer. Partners liked the people told to ask many questions more, and the researchers traced much of that to follow-up questions, which show you listened and care to know more. People did not expect asking questions to make them more liked. A 2025 correction, made after an independent audit, fixed minor reporting errors and kept every conclusion.²

These were get-to-know-you chats, and being liked in a chat is far from earning a referral. Still, a follow-up costs nothing and shows you heard the last answer. When someone says the first year was hard, “What made it hard?” will teach you more than the next question on your list.

How long should an informational interview be?

Plan for 20 to 30 minutes, the length the BLS guide calls usual, and end at the time you agreed. As the one asking, you lead: the guide says the other person should do most of the talking while you take notes, watch the clock and tell your host when the end is near.¹

4. Run the conversation and end on time

1. OpeningThank them, recall how you were connected, check how long they have
2. NextA short introduction: your background and what you are deciding
3. MiddleYour questions in priority order, with follow-ups
4. CloseAsk who else to talk to, thank them and end on time

Start by thanking them and reminding them how you were connected, as the UK career strategist John Lees advises in Harvard Business Review (2016), then ask how much time they have, as the author Dorie Clark suggests in the same piece. Lees says busy people are frustrated when someone spends 15 minutes on their own job search, and Clark suggests no more than three minutes on yourself: your background, what you are thinking and a request for their view.⁶ A version of your elevator pitch about yourself works here, ending on the decision you face. A logistics analyst might say: four years planning warehouse stock, now weighing product management, keen to hear what the first year there is like.

If the talk is going well as the agreed time runs out, Clark suggests saying you want to respect their time and that you understand if they need to go.⁶

Should you send a thank-you after an informational interview?

Yes, and quickly. Columbia University’s Career Design Lab advises sending a thank-you within 24 hours, thanking the person for their time and for what they shared.⁷

5. Thank them, then report back

Thanks may be more welcome than you expect. In three experiments reported in 2018 by University of Chicago researchers Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley, writers of gratitude letters guessed too low on how good the recipients would feel and too high on how awkward the recipients would find it.⁸ Those were general letters of gratitude rather than notes to career contacts, and the abstract was all we could see, so count it as encouragement to send the note rather than proof that notes help.

A good note names one piece of advice and what you will do with it: “Thank you for your time yesterday. Your suggestion to start as a research coordinator rather than wait for a research nurse role changed my plan, and I’ve applied for two coordinator posts. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

Then keep that promise. Cambridge University’s Careers Service in the UK points out that people who gave advice may well be curious how things turned out, and that a short note telling them reminds them of you and may prompt more help.⁹

After the conversation

• Send a thank-you within a day
• Name one piece of advice and what I will do with it
• Write up my notes and the date in one list
• Contact anyone they suggested, mentioning their name
• Tell them later how their advice turned out

What not to do in an informational interview

Three mistakes that career advisers commonly warn about are asking for a job, asking what a quick search would answer and running over time; each turns a favor into a cost for the other person.

Asking for a favor such as a job straight away is, in Clark’s words in Harvard Business Review, bad manners and close to an ambush, because you barely know the person. If a role opens at their organization a couple of weeks later, she suggests telling them you are applying and asking which parts of your experience to stress.⁶

Questions with public answers waste the person’s time, and the Cambridge Careers Service warns against asking anything that public information could answer.⁹ Read their profile and their organization’s website before you meet.

One more trap is letting one conversation decide for you. The BLS guide advises talking to at least a few people in an occupation and checking what you hear against other sources.¹

How informational interviews work outside the US

The custom grew up in American career advice, and most guidance on it, including this article’s main sources, comes from US institutions; we found no study comparing how welcome such requests are across countries. Careers services elsewhere, Cambridge’s in the UK among them, teach it too.⁹

In Australia, a 2021 study at La Trobe University built an informational interview into a second-year biosciences course, and students’ reflections described the experience as positive and useful for career planning.¹⁰ It measured how students felt about the exercise, not where their careers went, and we did not see the full paper.

How direct a first message can be, and whether a stranger’s request is welcome at all, varies with country and field. Ask a careers adviser where you live, or someone in that field there, how people usually make such requests, and lean on introductions where cold messages are rare.

What has been tested and what is only advice

Little about informational interviews themselves has been tested beyond student surveys; the steps rest on consistent careers-service guidance and on nearby research about asking, questioning and thanking.

The bottom line

An informational interview works when you treat it as a short, prepared favor: ask for 20 to 30 minutes, bring about ten questions a search could not answer, follow up on what you hear and stop on time. This week, pick two people a few steps ahead of you, send each a three-sentence request, and set a reminder to thank them the day after you talk.