Informational interviews are informal opportunities to share or seek information. These chats can cover all sorts of topics, from switching disciplines or moving countries to potential job openings and collaborations. Most importantly, they are the mechanism that makes networking — the building of mutually beneficial working relationships — so powerful.

When you chat to someone who could later become your supervisor, employer or collaborator, you gain insights into what is driving the field and which pain points exist. As the other party shares challenges that they’ve encountered, you can articulate how your expertise, skills and knowledge might help them to overcome these roadblocks.

What’s invaluable about these conversations is that they also provide a full, multidimensional picture of your personality and what it’s like to work with you that cannot be articulated through social-media profiles and job applications. After all, as the conversation unfolds, both of you are demonstrating how you identify and solve problems, your collegiality and, perhaps most interestingly, the chemistry that you have with one another.

Once that connection is established, it creates a trust and a bond, and the other person might even come to see you as someone who can add value to their work or team. Although an informational interview is usually a privilege that someone has granted you to provide insight into a career path, the best interviewers will do what they can to make it a two-way networking opportunity, during which your positivity and collaborative nature can be experienced at first hand. The ultimate goal is for you both to find new career and research opportunities that can be explored together, now or in the future.

You might feel awkward and weird when you begin engaging in these chats but, as I tell my career-coaching clients, and explain in my book Create Your Unicorn Career, the more informational interviews you do, the less uncomfortable they will feel — and the better you will get at building meaningful relationships.

How to land an informational interview

Before you can talk to a leader, you first have to identify who you want to talk to. You might do this by reviewing the membership directory of a professional society, as well as its board of directors, committee chairs and staff lists. Similarly, conference apps and programmes allow you to pick out speakers, poster presenters, exhibitors and attendees. Publications can be used to identify authors, as well as people who are quoted or cited. Unsurprisingly, social media, especially LinkedIn, is another useful tool.

I call any channel that brings like-minded parties together a networking node. These nodes provide a long list of people with whom you can network, as well as high-quality leads, such as people with whom you have something in common.

After establishing your nodes, keep in mind that most of your networking will take place not in person, but by virtual means. This might mean finding someone online, e-mailing them to ask for the conversation and using a Zoom or WhatsApp call to conduct the interview.

In Create Your Unicorn Career, I provide a template of the first correspondence you should send to organize an informational interview. Here are a few things to include:

• Introduce yourself, your educational background and your current role (such as pursuing your PhD).

• Mention how you found them and reference something about their CV or qualifications.

• Ask for only 15 minutes, and stick to it! You don’t want them to think that the conversation will be time-intensive.

• Refer to the meeting as ‘informal’. You are setting the expectation that this is an opportunity to chat and get to know each other, rather than a formal interview.

• Make it incredibly easy for them to book a meeting with you. Give them a few date and time options in their time zone (or even a calendar booking link).

The key here is to encourage them to meet with you; it is not enough just to message them directly. The goal is to book that discussion, because that is where the magic will happen, your mutual chemistry will be explored and they will get a more comprehensive sense of your abilities and personality.

Don’t forget to express an interest in helping in some way, such as sharing laboratory techniques that have worked well for you. You want them to know that you aren’t just looking to get something out of them.

Although you might not be fully clear what you, as an early-career researcher, can provide to an established leader, the genuine act of offering will be incredibly well received and set the stage for exploring what you could contribute. It could even be as simple as introducing them to someone in your network.

What do you say?

An informational interview shouldn’t feel like a job interview; instead, think of it as an exchange that allows you to learn about each other. Because it is informal, share information about yourself as you ask questions of the other person. This isn’t bragging — it’s smart conversation that initiates opportunities for everyone. For example, you could say: “I am curious about what experiences you had beyond the lab during your postdoctoral studies that set you up for success? I write a Substack on science communication and I was wondering how this might help me in pursuing a career in this area.”

A step-by-step guide for scientists who hate conference networking

An important tip: tailor the conversation using information that you have gleaned from their CV or LinkedIn profile. If you have anything in common (perhaps you attended the same university), say so. If you see that they mentored undergraduates, ask them about that learning experience.

In Create Your Unicorn Career, I have a long list of questions that are useful in informational interviews. Here are a few of my favourites, with explanations as to why they work:

• “What is the best part of your job?” This gets them talking about something that brings them joy and reminds them why they pursued this discipline.

• “How did you find your way into this career, subfield or institution?” This helps you to understand the routes that you might have to take.

• “What are some of the interesting challenges that you are working on?” This shows your natural curiosity and provides clues as to how you might be able to help them overcome obstacles.

• “How has your job/field/organization changed in the past few years?” This illuminates outside pressures that you want to be aware of before launching a career.

• “What conferences, associations and publications are important in this field?” This enables you to understand the network and resources that are crucial to career growth.

• “What experiences, knowledge areas and leadership capabilities have helped you to progress?” This outlines a road map to acquiring coveted skills beyond the lab.

Ask for what you want

When you ask for help in an informational interview, it sends the message that you are being honest about your motivations. And make no mistake — this type of networking works because it serves both people.

However, don’t ask for a job or something similarly specific. That suggests that you view the meeting as a transactional one-off as opposed to the dawn of a collaborative relationship and career connection.

So, how should you communicate requests? The key is in the delicate balance of delivery and timing — ensure that the other person comprehends that your key interest is to gain information that will allow you to grow.