Illinois Tech Career Services · Career Resources
The Interview Where
You Ask the Questions
Informational interviews are how you gather the insider data that turns a job search into a strategy — and they are easier to get than you think.
The job market you are entering does not reward applications alone. Uploading a resume into a portal and waiting is the strategy everyone else is already running. An informational interview is different: it is data gathering. Twenty-five minutes with someone doing the work you want — where you ask the questions — tells you which skills are emerging, how people in that industry actually get hired, and what would make a recruiter notice you. That data is what a real search strategy is built from.
80%
Of Your Search Is People, Not Paperwork
25 min
The Ask That Gets a Yes
0
Times You Ask for a Job
5–7
A Month While You Search
The Illinois Tech Career Services coaching framework
The Part Everyone Gets Wrong
Two Rules That Make or Break It
Rule one: they do the talking. You are there to ask short, quick questions and listen. If you are speaking more than a fifth of the time, you are collecting less data than you came for.
Rule two: never ask for a job. You are asking for insight, not employment. The moment it becomes a job ask, the honest data stops and the door starts closing. Do this right and doors open on their own — that is the paradox that makes it work.
The ask that gets a yes: “Could I get 25 minutes on your calendar? I’d love to ask a few questions about health information technology — I’m impressed by the work you’re doing and the career you’ve built.” Specific, time-capped, and sincere. People say yes to this.
Build the skill — select a row to open it
1Finding People Is the Easy Part
Warm contacts, 80,000+ alumni filters, and two cold methods that actually work▾
Why it works: the people already working in your field know things no job posting will tell you. They know which skills are budding in the market before courses exist for them. They know how they would find work next week if they had to. Collect that knowledge across five or six conversations and patterns emerge — and those patterns tell you exactly what to do with your resume, your portfolio, your courses, and your target list.
Start Warm
- Professors, instructors, and research advisers — they know where their former students landed
- Classmates, recent graduates, and people you have worked with anywhere
- Alumni Mentorship Program — facilitated introductions to alumni in your target industry or city
- Illinois Tech alumni on LinkedIn — filter 80,000+ graduates by company, city, or field
Then Go Cold — It Works
- The company method: open a target company’s LinkedIn page, click People, and filter by city or school — ten minutes of digging produces a real list
- The title method: search the exact job title you want and reach out to strangers who hold it — you are asking about their work, and most people enjoy talking about their work
- Research the company first with Galvin Library’s databases — free, and they work from anywhere
- Build the habit alongside the Networking & Making Connections channel on Elevate
2The Fifteen Strongest Questions
In TIARA order — plus deeper banks from Indeed, Coursera, and The Muse▾
In the order a real conversation flows: open with their story, mine the industry for data, then turn it toward your next move. Professionals structure this arc with the TIARA framework from Steve Dalton’s The 2-Hour Job Search — Trends, Insights, Advice, Resources, Assignments — and the fifteen questions below map onto it. You will only get through six to eight in 25 minutes; choose the ones that match what you most need to learn.
- How did you get this role — what were the actual steps that led you here?
- Why did you choose this field — and what has surprised you most about it?
- What does a typical week actually look like in your role?
- What is the hardest part of this work that nobody mentions in the job description?
- What does your five-year path look like from here?
- What skills should I be developing right now that this industry will want in two years?
- Where is this field heading — what is growing, and what is quietly disappearing?
- If you lost your job tomorrow, what would you do first to find the next one?
- If you were in my shoes today, how would you go about looking for work?
- What separates the people who get hired here from the people who almost do?
- Would you be willing to look at my resume — what is missing from it?
- What projects would make a recruiter in this field take notice of my portfolio?
- Which courses or certifications actually matter to hiring teams — and which are noise?
- Which networking events, conferences, or communities are worth my time?
- Who else should I be talking to — and may I mention that you sent me?
When You Need More Questions
- Indeed: 30 questions to elevate the conversation — organized by career stage
- Indeed: the core question list — with guidance on when to ask each one
- Coursera: 10 informational interview questions — a strong short list for your first conversations
- The Muse: 3 steps to a perfect informational interview — how to sequence your questions into a conversation
Go Deeper on the Craft
- Coursera: what an informational interview is — the five-question starter version
- Indeed: the complete guide — benefits, etiquette, and process end to end
- Indeed: prepare in 5 steps — the pre-conversation checklist
- The Muse: 5 keys to acing it — conduct that gets you remembered
- The Muse: 5 tips for non-awkward conversations — because the first few feel strange for everyone
3The Email That Skipped the Black Hole
A true story from our coaching team — no job ask, a same-day reply from a CEO▾
A True Story From Our Coaching Team
One of our coaches, back when he was on the market himself, had done his informational interviews and used the data to build a different kind of move. He found a startup he admired, dug up the CEO’s email address, and sent a short note: congratulations on the recent seed round, here are the two features of your platform I think are terrific, your work makes me proud to be in this industry. Two lines of introduction — degree, experience, a similar project he had built. No job ask.
The CEO replied the same day, copied the head of HR, and asked her to take a look at his resume. An interview followed, then an offer — which he declined, because by then his search strategy had produced something even better.
The lesson is not “email CEOs.” The lesson is that informational interviews give you the data to invent moves like this — specific, sincere, and impossible to ignore — while everyone else is refreshing a job portal.
4The Outreach and the Follow-Through
The 120-word ask, and the follow-through that turns 25 minutes into a referral▾
Making the Ask
- Keep it under 120 words: one specific compliment, a one-line introduction, a 25-minute ask
- The Muse: how to ask and get a yes — with the message templates our coaches share in sessions
- Indeed: the outreach email — structure and worked examples
- Harvard Business Review’s guide — the classic on running the conversation well
After the Conversation
- Send a thank-you within 24 hours — name one thing they said that changed your plan
- Log what you learned; after five conversations, read your notes back and watch the patterns surface
- Act on one recommendation before you reconnect — a course, an event, a portfolio project — then tell them you did
- Keep the relationship warm. That is how a 25-minute conversation becomes a referral — and this skill compounds across every job you will ever hold
Do two or three of these conversations, bring your notes to a coach, and we will build your search plan around what you learned.
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All external resources independently verified by Career Services, July 2026.
