Preparing for Information/referral Interviews

Summary:
A successful information/referral interview gives your contact person the opportunity to provide you with the career management information you need. That means you must do your research so you can ask the right questions.

Overview

Why Preparation Is Important

Job Research

Industry Research

Company Research

How to Use Your Research Findings

Related Links

Related Content

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Overview

In this article, I'll provide some tips about how to prepare for information/referral interviews through job, industry, and company research. Together, these three types of research will help you conduct a successful interview.

Why Preparation Is Important

Seasoned journalists say that, for every minute you spend in an interview, you should spend at least 10 minutes preparing for it by doing some research. However, you are not trying to impress your contact person with the knowledge you have. Instead, you want to show your willingness to learn. Don't be afraid to ask questions, but do not waste your contact person's time by asking about something you could have obtained, for example, through a simple Internet search.

The more you know the better you'll be able to formulate the questions for your information/referral interview. You'll also feel more confident about your ability to communicate effectively. Ask yourself what it is you want to know and then figure out who has an investment in knowing that sort of information. Conduct your Internet search. If you need more information, contact the public relations, communication or human resources department of your target company for brochures and pamphlets that it can send as an attachment to an e-mail message to you.

But, you ask: Instead of going through all this preparation for an information/referral, interview, why don't I just read the occupational information I find on the Internet? Written information is often general and not specific, and due to the time and cost of developing such materials, no written material is 100 percent up-to-date. Also, written information may not answer your specific questions or concerns about your targeted job or speak to the most current changes or trends in your targeted field. And, by not conducting your information/referral interviews, you won't be able to build your network of referrals. Through networking, you become visible to decision makers in the right places -- putting you in a position of discovering job opportunities and career information you would otherwise probably never find.

Take your time as you select the contact people you interview. Individual perspectives, work environments and specific jobs differ tremendously from one place to another. Try to avoid forming an opinion based on one person's enthusiasm, cynicism or observation. It may be necessary to talk with several people to get an accurate picture of a job, an industry and a company and whether they are right for you.


Job Research

Consider these tips for conducting your job research:

• Use the personal presentation materials you have already developed (see Essential Career Marketing Tactic: Self-presentation) to identify your potential career and/or occupation interest.
  
  
• Attend meetings (local, state, regional) for professional associations in your career interest field.
  
  
• Search the Internet, check organizational directories, and visit with public speakers. Query professors (particularly adjunct or part-time professors), co-workers, neighbors, family and friends. Ask if they know of anyone who is working in your target job. If they don't, ask them for the name of someone who might.
  
  
• Select your contact people from those who are actually doing the type of job you want to know about. Consider those who are close to the level at which you would expect to begin working. Be sure they are in the department which interests you most. Beware of top-level people, supervisors, directors, managers etc. who may be out of touch with actually doing the job you're targeting.

Industry Research

These are my recommendations for conducting your industry research:

• Evaluate labor conditions and trends to identify the best industries to consider. Read all you can about the field before the interview. Decide what information you would like to obtain about the industries you find interesting.
  
  
• Check the financial well-being and growth of smaller companies within a particular industry because they may be good indicators of the sector's overall strength or weakness.
  
  
• Remember that a company operates within a specific industry that is going through one of these four broad cycles:
  
  
  Embryonic - Marked by low cost of entry, a chaotic market, scattered competition and a growing consumer demand. Example: VCR industry in the early 1980s.
  
  Growing - Marked by explosive growth, more sophisticated competition and a more demanding market. Example: video stores in the late 1980s.
  
  Maturing - Marked by more stable growth, high cost of entry, fierce competition and consolidation. Example: today's PC industry.
  
  Declining - Marked by lower profits, increased price competition and fewer but larger players. Example: today's dairy industry.
  
  

I find these two sites are exceptionally helpful for both industry and company research:

• Dunn & Bradstreet's Small Business Solutions section includes industry lists and company profiles. The site allows you to find a business by name, location, D-U-N-S Number, or telephone number from its database of more than 13 million U.S. companies. It includes a large number of small businesses. You can obtain basic information about each company (address, telephone number, URLs, business principal or chief executive officer, and business size) for free.
  
  
• ThomasRegister.com offers industry lists and company contact information. Registration is free for this service. You can search the entire contents of this online directory, which features products from over 173,000 companies in the U.S. and Canada. The directory allows you to search by company name, product or service, or brand name and retrieve a list of all companies supplying that product, the address/phone/fax for their offices, and a list of all products they supply.

Company Research

In addition to the services of Dunn & Bradstreet and Thomas Register, consider using two excellent umbrella sites that walk you through the whole process of company research:

• The Quintessential Careers Guide to Researching Companies
  
  
• Guide to Researching Companies, Industries, and Countries
  
  

Other resources include company web sites, annual reports, other company literature, library reference materials and university career service offices.


How to Use Your Research Findings

You are now ready to use your research findings to:

• Decide on the purpose of your interview. Be sure you understand exactly what you want to accomplish by deciding what information you need.
  
  
• Prepare a list of questions which are appropriate for the particular person you are interviewing. Those will help you establish the interview's agenda.
  
  

Preparing questions for your information/referral interview, based on your career goal and your research, is the next topic in this series about career marketing tactics.

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