Informational Interviews: How to Get Them and What to Actually Ask

The informational interview is one of the most underused job-search tools on the planet, mostly because the name sounds boring and the idea feels awkward. People hear “informational interview” and picture a weird favor they’re asking a stranger for, with no clear payoff. They skip it, apply to jobs online, and wonder why the black hole never talks back.

Here’s what the actual pros do. They spend about a third of their job-search time on informational interviews. Not networking events. Not LinkedIn comment threads. Real, one-on-one, 20-minute conversations with people who work at the companies they want to work at, or in the roles they want to grow into. And they get hired, not because someone gave them a job out of sympathy, but because those conversations change what the job search is actually made of.

This guide walks through the whole thing. How to pick the right people to reach out to, how to write the message that actually gets a yes, what questions to ask in the conversation, and how to follow up so the contact lasts past a single meeting. You won’t be asking for favors. You’ll be building a practice.

Why Informational Interviews Work When Job Boards Don’t

Here’s the paradox of modern job search. The more efficient the job boards get, the worse they work for the applicant. LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor. They’ve made it easier than ever to click “Apply Now,” which means every role gets 500 applications in 48 hours, which means your resume competes with 499 others for a skim that lasts 7 seconds. That’s not a search. That’s a lottery.

Informational interviews flip the math. When you have a 20-minute conversation with someone inside a company, you aren’t a PDF in a pile. You’re a person they can describe to a hiring manager later. Research out of LinkedIn’s own recruiter products suggests that referred candidates are 4 to 10 times more likely to get hired than cold applicants, and informational interviews are the cleanest way to earn a referral without already being friends with the person.

The second thing they do is help you see inside the company. Job descriptions lie. They’re written by someone in HR who hasn’t done the work in years, and they optimize for legal safety, not accuracy. A 20-minute conversation with someone actually doing the work tells you what the job is really like, what the team is actually working on, and whether the culture is anywhere close to what the careers page claims. That’s information you can’t get any other way, and it saves you from wasting months at a bad fit.

Third, these conversations change how you talk about yourself. After three or four of them, you know which of your skills land, which of your stories get nods, and which parts of your background are most interesting to the kind of people you want to work for. You can’t rehearse your way to that. You have to practice on real humans, and informational interviews are the safest place to practice.

Picking the Right People to Reach Out To

Don’t start with the VP. Don’t start with the CEO. They’ll ignore you, and even if they don’t, they’re too far from the actual work to tell you anything useful.

Start with people who are one to three years ahead of where you want to be, inside a company you’re targeting. An IC two levels above you, or a manager one level above your target level. Close enough to remember what the ramp looked like. Senior enough to see how the team really runs. Busy, but not locked behind three layers of admin.

Here’s where to find them.

LinkedIn search. Filter by current company and target job title. Look for people who graduated from your school, worked at a company you also worked at, or share any other real connection. That connection is the thread you pull in the opening message.

Company alumni pages. Many large companies have alumni groups on LinkedIn. Former employees are often happier to talk than current ones, and they can tell you honestly what the company is like.

Conference speakers and podcast guests. If someone is doing public talks about your area of interest, they’ve already signaled they like explaining their work. They’re far more likely to say yes than a random hiring manager. Search the archives of 2 or 3 industry-relevant podcasts and you’ll find a hit list in an hour.

Your existing second-degree network. Scroll your LinkedIn contacts and click into each person’s connections. You’ll find people at your target companies you didn’t know about. A shared mutual contact, even a weak one, triples your response rate.

Aim for a list of 30 people. You’ll end up having conversations with 8 to 12 of them, because reply rates run around 30 to 40 percent for well-crafted cold messages. If your reply rate is lower than that, your messages need work.

The Message That Actually Gets a Yes

Cold outreach is where most informational interview campaigns die. Either people don’t send any messages, or they send the wrong messages and get ignored. Here’s the one that works.

Keep it short. Under 80 words. Specific. Named. Personal.

Here’s a working template. Adapt every line to the actual person.

Hi Name,

I found your profile through the recent write-up on your team’s work on X. I’m thinking seriously about moving into that space over the next year, and I’d love to hear how you approached the transition. If you have 20 minutes on Zoom in the next couple of weeks, I’d really value your perspective. No pitch, no ask beyond your time and experience.

Either way, thanks for the work you’re putting out.

Your name

Three things that message does right. It names a specific thing that caught your attention. It’s explicit that you want 20 minutes, on video, soon. And it closes by signaling you aren’t about to dump a resume on them.

If your ask is vague (“I’d love to chat about your career”), most people ignore it. If your ask is too big (“Can I pick your brain over coffee next week?”), most people decline because coffee is an hour and a logistics puzzle. Twenty minutes on Zoom feels low-friction and contained, which is the exact sweet spot.

For a deeper playbook on cold messaging through LinkedIn specifically, read our companion article on cold outreach that gets replies. For the broader strategy of building a job-search network over time, see our guide on networking for the job search.

What to Ask in the Conversation

You got the yes. Now you’ve got 20 minutes. If you waste them, the contact evaporates. Here’s the structure that works every time.

Minute 0 to 2: Warm up. Thank them. Reference the specific thing you mentioned in your outreach. Give them 60 seconds of who you are. Then hand the floor back.

Minute 2 to 12: Their story. Ask them how they ended up in their current role. Not as a small-talk question. As the actual interview. Good follow-ups. “What was the moment you knew you wanted to make that move?” “What’s the thing you wish you’d known before joining?” “What do you spend most of your week actually doing now?” People love talking about their own path, and you’ll learn more about the role in ten minutes of this than a week of reading job descriptions.

Minute 12 to 17: Your specific questions. Have three ready. Not generic ones. Specific to their role, their company, their team. “I saw your team shipped X last quarter. What part of that was hardest?” “How does your team decide what to build next?” “If someone in my shoes wanted to be a strong candidate for your team 12 months from now, what would you want them to have done in that year?”

That last question is gold. It gives them a chance to effectively sketch out the growth plan that would make you hireable, which means you walk out of the conversation with a checklist specific to the company you want to work at. Almost no one asks it. Ask it.

Minute 17 to 20: Close and referral. Two lines. “This was really helpful. Thank you for the time.” And then, “Is there one other person you’d suggest I reach out to who’s thinking about this kind of work?” That second line is how one informational interview turns into three. Most people, if the conversation went well, will name someone. You just doubled your pipeline.

Don’t ask for a job. Don’t ask them to forward your resume. Don’t ask for feedback on your resume in that meeting. Those are different conversations that happen later, if at all, and not because you asked. If you impressed them, they’ll offer.

The Follow-Up That Keeps the Door Open

Most people never send a follow-up, and most of the ones who do send a generic “thanks for your time” that nobody reads. Both are wasted opportunity.

Inside 24 hours, send a thank-you that references two specific things from the conversation. Not “thanks for the great chat.” Rather, “Your point about how your team decides which projects to cut landed hard. I’d been thinking about that the wrong way.” Show them you were actually listening, and that the conversation changed something in your head.

Then, inside that same email, do one of two things. If they offered to make an introduction to someone else, confirm it with a one-line thank-you and wait for the intro to land. If they didn’t, name one specific thing you’re going to do in the next 30 days based on the conversation. “I’m going to finish the course you mentioned and try my hand at a weekend project that mirrors the kind of work your team does.”

Ninety days later, send a short update. One paragraph. What you did. What changed. No ask. That update is what turns a one-off interview into a real relationship, and those relationships are what open the door when a real opening comes up 6, 12, or 18 months later.

When to Actually Ask About Openings

About one in four informational interviews will surface an opening inside that company that isn’t yet posted, or is posted but still accepting referrals. Your job isn’t to fish for that. Your job is to be memorable and useful enough that the person brings it up themselves.

If they do, your answer is simple. “I’d love to be considered. Would you be open to forwarding my resume internally?” That’s it. Don’t overexplain. Don’t apologize for taking their time. Short, clear, grateful.

If they don’t bring up an opening and you suspect one exists, wait at least two weeks. Then send a short follow-up. “Hi Name, I wanted to circle back. I saw Company posted the X role last week. Would you be comfortable passing along my resume to the hiring manager, or would that feel premature?” That framing respects their social capital and lets them say no gracefully. Most people, if they enjoyed the conversation, will say yes.

Informational interviews aren’t networking theater. They’re a real tool that compounds over time. Eight conversations turn into 20 referrals turn into 3 interviews turn into 1 offer. That’s the math of a good job search, and it scales far better than any job board you’ll ever find.