Informational Interview Request Email
An informational interview is a conversation with someone doing work you are interested in, where you are not asking for a job. That last clause is the whole thing, and abandoning it is why most of these requests fail.
People agree to these surprisingly often. Talking about your own work to someone genuinely curious is pleasant, it costs half an hour, and most people remember someone doing it for them.
They stop agreeing the moment the request reads as a job application in disguise, which is a distinction the reader makes within the first two lines.
Why short requests get answered
The request is competing against a full inbox, and length is read as cost before a word of content is weighed. A three-line email asking for twenty minutes gets a reply; a four-paragraph email attaching a resume does not.
Everything the request needs fits comfortably in that space: who you are in one clause, why this person specifically, what you want to ask about, and how long it will take. Anything beyond that is you talking rather than asking.
Naming a short duration matters more than it should. Twenty minutes is a slot someone can find this week; "a coffee sometime" is a commitment with no boundary, which is harder to agree to than a longer meeting with a defined end.
Finding people worth asking
Avoid asking someone who is currently hiring for a role you want. However genuine the request, it will be read as an attempt to route around the process, and it puts them in an awkward position.
- Alumni of your school in the field — the shared institution is a real reason to reply and alumni directories exist for this.
- Second-degree connections, asked through the person you both know rather than cold.
- People who wrote or spoke about something specific you can reference.
- Someone two to five years ahead of you rather than at the top — their experience is more relevant and their calendar is more open.
- People at companies you are researching, well before any application exists.
Example request to an alum
Subject: Ellsworth alum — 20 minutes about clinical data management?
Hi Dr. Fenwick,
I graduated from Ellsworth in 2024 and am now two years into a lab analyst role, looking seriously at moving into clinical data management. Your name came up when I asked the alumni office who had made a similar move.
Would you have twenty minutes in the next few weeks? I am mainly trying to understand what the transition actually looked like day to day, and whether the certifications people mention are as necessary as they seem from outside.
Happy to work around whatever time suits, and equally happy if now is not a good moment.
Thank you, Camille Adeyemi.
Every name, employer and date in this example is invented. Replace all of it with your own.
Running the conversation
- Send three or four questions a day ahead. It lets them think, and it signals you will not waste the slot.
- Open by restating the time — "I know we said twenty minutes" — and then keep to it.
- Ask about their path, not about openings. The single rule that keeps this working.
- Follow the interesting thread rather than your list. The prepared questions are insurance, not a script.
- Near the end, ask who else they would suggest speaking to. This is where the compounding happens.
- Stop at the time you named, even mid-sentence. Offering to end is what earns an offer to continue.
Questions that produce useful answers
Generic questions produce generic answers, and the generic version of every answer is already on the internet.
What works: what a normal Tuesday actually contains; which part of the job surprised them; what they would have done differently in the first two years; what makes someone good at this rather than merely competent; what the field is arguing about right now; what they wish someone had told them before they started.
What does not: what the salary range is, whether they are hiring, whether they would refer you, and any question whose answer is a fact you could have looked up. The first three break the frame, and the fourth wastes a slot you asked for.
What happens afterwards
Send a thank-you the same day, and make it specific — one thing they said that changed how you were thinking. Two lines is enough and it is the difference between being remembered and not.
If they suggested someone else, follow up on it within a fortnight and tell them you did. People who see their referral acted on refer again; people who do not, quietly stop.
Then, two or three months later, send a short update on what you did with the advice. This is the step almost nobody takes and it is the one that converts a single conversation into a relationship — which is where the actual opportunities come from, usually much later and never through the channel you expected.
Frequently asked questions
No, provided the ask is short, specific and does not disguise a job request. Most people are glad to talk about their work for twenty minutes, particularly to someone who has clearly done some homework first.
No. It reframes the message as an application and lowers the reply rate sharply. Send it afterwards only if they ask.
Twenty to thirty minutes, and name the figure in the request. A defined short slot is easier to agree to than an open-ended coffee, and ending on time is what earns a second conversation.
Better not to. Ask instead who else they would recommend speaking to — it keeps the frame intact, and someone who liked the conversation will usually raise openings themselves.