Interviews, Careers, Matt Du Pont

This month’s podcast is with Matthew Du Pont, author of How to Get First-Round Interviews at Tech Companies, The Unusually Difficult Guide. Most people have an idea about interviewing for a specific job but I spoke with Matt about informational interviews, which are different.

Informational interviews serve the dual purpose of helping you learn about a potential career while establishing connections within that particular industry. Often, people don’t know where to start the process, including who they should approach and how.

Matt’s book is loaded with practical tips so you’ll want to read them all. But here are three great ideas you can start thinking about:

Find the right person to interview.
You may not have much experience in the area you’re trying to enter so a personal connection can help. Locating someone who is working in your area of interest is a great start.

Find the right company.
Interviewing someone who currently works at your company of interest or who is a former employee can give you lots of insights about what challenges that company is currently facing or might face in the future.

Have the right conversation.
When someone agrees to spend 15 minutes speaking to you, you need to make your questions count. Do your research and be specific. Try to find similarities with the person which you can build a conversation on because it shows you’re serious and makes a great impression. Then, if they get the chance to recommend you, it’s more likely they will.

Useful Resources

For more about informational interviews go to Matt’s website where you can use discount code CAREERFARM for 25% off his book.

More helpful resources: See Matt’s guide for How to write forwardable introductions and How to find someone’s email address

Whether this is the first episode you’ve come across, or if you’ve listened to all of them, I would love to hear your feedback. Reviews on iTunes are hugely important to the success of the show, so I would be incredibly grateful if you were able to spare a minute to leave some honest feedback there. Thanks so much if you are able to help. Click here to leave a review.

The post 93: How To Get an Informational Interview – with Matthew Du Pont appeared first on The Career Farm.

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