{"id":1507,"date":"2012-12-17T13:23:17","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T20:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/?p=1507"},"modified":"2012-12-17T13:23:17","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T20:23:17","slug":"amazing-informational-interviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/career\/amazing-informational-interviews","title":{"rendered":"Amazing informational interviews"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a fantastic technique I&#8217;ve used for learning from other people.\u00a0 Although I don&#8217;t care for the name &#8220;informational interviewing,&#8221; it&#8217;s powerful and useful in all kinds of situations.<\/p>\n<p>A couple of years ago, I was evaluating a range of business coaching companies to find out if I might want to join one.\u00a0 The problem was that information was coming to me in random and unreliable ways, and wasn&#8217;t leading me to any clear conclusion.<\/p>\n<p>I needed to use an organized process.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->I decided that I wanted to talk with at least five people who had useful information about each company I was evaluating, so I could get a range of viewpoints.\u00a0 I wanted to ask a consistent list of questions, giving me results that I could compare.<\/p>\n<p>I quickly realized that this could take a LOT of time, because setting up appointments with dozens of people is not an easy task.\u00a0 So I decided to try a novel approach: the 15 minute informational interview.\u00a0 I figured that almost anybody would be willing to chat for 15 minutes, and in that time I could get most of what I needed.<\/p>\n<p>After looking at this carefully, I decided that there were just five truly essential questions I needed to ask:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What is the value that you get from your company?<\/li>\n<li>How well do you like the people you&#8217;re working with?<\/li>\n<li>What are your biggest frustrations?<\/li>\n<li>If you were doing this again, what would you do differently?<\/li>\n<li>What other questions should I be asking?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It turns out that I got some absolutely brilliant information out of this, far beyond what I expected.\u00a0 I uncovered some key concerns, and rapidly refined my decision criteria.\u00a0 When I ultimately joined up with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smallfish.us\" target=\"_blank\">Small Fish Business Coaching<\/a>, it was based on confidence that I knew what I was getting into.\u00a0 And I haven&#8217;t regretted that decision for a moment.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re looking to switch careers, evaluate employers, or join a group, this could be a powerful technique for you.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s the principles I learned:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Have courage &#8211; this is important, and if you think through it carefully, you&#8217;re not really imposing on others much at all.<\/li>\n<li>Talk to a range of people.\u00a0 They&#8217;ll have different points of view, and each one can help you to refine your understanding.<\/li>\n<li>Make it as pleasant as possible for the other person.\u00a0 Be gracious and thankful.\u00a0 Keep it short.\u00a0 Buy them coffee or lunch if possible.<\/li>\n<li>Create a focused set of questions, to get comparable results and to minimize wasting peoples&#8217; time.<\/li>\n<li>Have them be open-ended questions.\u00a0 Let the person expand in the direction that&#8217;s most meaningful to them.<\/li>\n<li>Be clear about why you&#8217;re doing this.\u00a0 People may put up barriers if they think you&#8217;re trying to gain advantage or gather information for underhanded purposes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Give this a try!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a fantastic technique I&#8217;ve used for learning from other people.\u00a0 Although I don&#8217;t care for the name &#8220;informational interviewing,&#8221; it&#8217;s powerful and useful in all kinds of situations. A <a href=\"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/career\/amazing-informational-interviews\" class=\"more-link\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,48,37,52],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-carl","4":"has-more-link","5":"post-1507","7":"format-standard","8":"category-career","9":"post_tag-career-coaching","10":"post_tag-interviewing","11":"post_tag-learning","12":"post_tag-tools"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1508,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions\/1508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dierschow.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}