Feedback on Drafts of Your Can-Do Portfolio
If you have prepared a draft of your targeted Can-Do Portfolio, infor-
mational interviews are a great place to get low-risk feedback on the
appropriateness of the items you are thinking of including. The odds
are that the person you are interviewing will be intrigued by the fact
that you have a portfolio and will be interested in taking a look at it.Further Leads
If the interview goes well, the person you are talking with is likely to
suggest further people you should talk to and may even provide you
with some job leads. You may also be able to get an insider’s view of the
next steps you should take to get the kind of job you are seeking.HOW TO GET USEFUL INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEWS
To get good information about a job or field in which you are interest-
ed, you need to talk to people who are both knowledgeable about the
field or type of job that you wish to learn more about and willing to talk
to you.
The following are some strategies to set up informational inter-
views with people who can help you.Think broadly about people who might be knowledgeable.The
kinds of people who might be particularly useful to interview are not
limited to current incumbents of the kind of job you are looking for.
Here are some other categories to consider:People who have entered the field you are interested in recently (in
the past couple of years) and who can tell you what it’s like
Senior people who have pursued careers in the field and can provide
some perspective
People who have recently left the field
People who work with people in the field—consultants, suppliers, and
so on.Contact the least intimidating people first. This step will get you
started. Comfortable initial contacts might include friends, extended
family members, parents’ friends, friends’ parents, professors, former
employers, teammates, classmates, alumni of schools you went to,
trusted colleagues, and so on. Your initial contacts may not be the peo-
ple you wish to interview but, instead, be people who can refer you to
people to interview.
Seek out friends of friends.When developing contacts, you should
know that your most promising leads are most likely to come from
friends of friends rather than from the people you actually know at the
beginning of your search. So, if you don’t know anyone in the field in
which you’d like to do an informational interview, that’s not a barrier.
The odds are that someone you know will know someone in your cho-Chapter 4: Using Informational Interviews to Perfect Your Portfolio 49