Networking and Informational Interviews: A Practical Guide for Job Seekers

Most people avoid networking because they picture something transactional and awkward—cold-messaging strangers to ask for a favor. Done well, it is the opposite: a short, genuine conversation where you learn something real about a role or a company, and the other person spends fifteen minutes helping someone without being sold anything. It also happens to be the single highest-leverage activity in most job searches, because referred candidates get interviewed at meaningfully higher rates than cold applicants at most companies.

This guide covers how to find the right people, what to actually say, how to run the conversation, and how to follow up in a way that turns a fifteen-minute chat into a referral when a role opens.

What an informational interview actually is

An informational interview is a short conversation—usually 15 to 20 minutes—where you ask someone about their role, team, or company, not for a job. No resume attached, no ask for a referral in the first message. The entire point is to learn and build a real connection. The job-search benefit is a side effect of doing this well and consistently, not the stated purpose of any single conversation.

This distinction matters because people can tell the difference between genuine curiosity and a disguised job pitch. The disguised version gets ignored or gets a polite, generic response. The genuine version gets real answers and, over time, real advocacy.

Who to reach out to

• Second-degree connections at target companies. Someone your existing network already knows gives you a warm opener: "[Mutual contact] mentioned you work on..."
• People one or two levels above the role you want. They have the clearest view of what the role actually involves and what makes candidates succeed or stall.
• Former colleagues who moved to companies you are interested in. The lowest-friction outreach you can make—you already have shared context and trust.
• Alumni from your school or bootcamp at target companies. Shared affiliation is a legitimate, low-pressure reason to reach out even with zero prior connection.

Aim for 3 to 5 conversations a week during an active search. More than that becomes unsustainable to follow up on well; fewer than that rarely builds enough momentum to matter.

The outreach message that actually gets a reply

The messages that get ignored are generic, long, or ask for too much upfront. The ones that work are short, specific, and easy to say yes to:

Hi [Name] — I saw you work on [specific team/product] at [Company]. I'm exploring a move into [specific area] and would love 15 minutes to hear how you think about [specific, genuine question about their work]. Happy to work around your schedule.

Three things make this work: it names something specific about them (not a copy-paste template), it asks for a small, bounded amount of time, and it proposes a real question instead of a vague "pick your brain." Vague requests are easy to deprioritize; specific ones are easy to say yes to.

Running the conversation

Structure the call so it respects the time you asked for and leaves room for it to run longer only if the conversation is genuinely flowing.

1. First 2 minutes: Thank them, restate briefly why you reached out, and confirm how much time they have.
2. Middle 10 minutes: Ask your prepared questions, but let the conversation breathe. The best information usually comes from a tangent you did not plan for.
3. Last 3 minutes: Ask if there is anyone else they would suggest you talk to. This is how one conversation becomes three.

Questions worth asking

• "What does a strong first six months look like in a role like this?"
• "What surprised you most after you joined?"
• "What separates the people who do well here from the people who struggle?"
• "How is the team structured, and how does work actually get prioritized?"

Avoid asking directly about open roles in the first conversation. If they know of one and think you are a fit, they will usually mention it unprompted—and the offer means more when it is unprompted.

Following up without being that person

Send a short thank-you within 24 hours referencing something specific from the conversation—the same principle covered in our interview thank-you guide applies here. Then stay on their radar without pestering:

• Share something relevant every few months—an article related to something they mentioned, a congratulations on a role change you noticed on LinkedIn.
• When a role does open at their company, reference the earlier conversation directly: "We spoke back in [month] about [topic]—I saw the [role] opening and wanted to check if a referral might be appropriate."
• If they offer to refer you, make it easy: send a clean, tailored resume and a two-sentence summary they can forward without extra work on their part.

Start from a template or your existing resume — ATS-friendly by default. Build your resume free →

Networking on LinkedIn without feeling like a spam bot

LinkedIn is the default channel for this kind of outreach now. Before you send messages at scale, make sure your own profile actually supports the conversations you are starting—see our LinkedIn optimization guide and headline examples so a reply-worthy message is not undercut by a profile that gives the recipient nothing to go on.

How this compounds over a search

One conversation rarely produces a job. Twenty conversations over a few months routinely produce multiple warm paths into companies you actually want to work at—paths that convert to interviews at a much higher rate than a cold application into an ATS. Treat networking as a parallel track to your application volume, not a replacement for it, and pair it with a tracked pipeline so the conversations do not get lost in the noise of an active search.