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Why bother with it?


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CMS Start of section Research resources 11) Informational Interviewing 2/5 arrow pointing leftYou are here
Finding your Profile
An informational interview lets you get an insider's view of an occupation. You can get up to date information and the sort of insights which often never make it into print. Not only will this help you assess how suitable the type of work is for you, but also crucially it will enable you to see how to most effectively seek this type of work.

For the purposes of the assignment you will probably only do one of these interviews. However it is quite possible to do a whole series, particularly if each person you see is able to recommend another contact you can follow up. This way once you have mastered the technique, you can use a series of informational interviews to build up a very detailed picture of an employment area.

Many of the principles underlying informational interviewing can be transferred to other aspects of networking (see the video Can I have a Few Minutes of Your Time?) and can be applied to most fields of informational retrieval.

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