Transition with Me, Step by Step – Day 03

Transition with Me, Step by Step – Day 03
Procrastinating on Information Interviews

First of all, just for clarities sake – this is not the literal third day of the transition process, but I thought I’d keep things labeled in order. It seemed easier than jumping from day 2 to day 21 and having everyone wonder what they missed in between. :)

I promised to do my information interviews in two weeks. Three weeks have now passed and I have only talked to people I happened to be having lunch with anyway. I’m procrastinating on my information interviews, but this is a great thing to write about, because many of my clients also procrastinate on information interviews, and sometimes we even lose each other in this part of the process. It’s funny, because I have a list of people to call and a list of questions, but it doesn’t feel urgent, and I keep wanting to jump to the next step, or spend my time on “more important” things.

Information interviews, when done well, provide you with information that you can then use to better position yourself into your target job or your target client base. The problem with information interviewing is you don’t really know what juicy stuff you’ll find out before the conversations, so it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking they are not important. The other trap people fall into is trying to over-use the information interview, by turning it into a “secret roundabout way” to get a job. Unfortunately, if you take that approach, it usually comes across just as manipulative as it is.

Information interviews are powerful when they are done right. The purpose is to hear the story of several people who have already done something you are planning to do. As you hear their stories you will get the inside scoop on what they learned, and you can make much better decisions about your direction and your strategy.

Since these people know nothing about you, it’s important to keep the conversation focused on them and their story – NOT on what they think you should do. If you go down the “asking them for advice” path, the whole conversation moves up to a surface level, because they stop thinking about their real experiences and they start feeling pressured to give you good answers. However, if you take the pressure off and approach them more like a journalist – really interested in hearing their story, then you get more of the interesting experiences that they believe are unique to them. After hearing five different unique perspectives, you will be able to extrapolate for yourself what applies to you.

To drive home this point, I’ll share a great example:

When I was a product manager in the high tech world, if you asked me for advice on what you needed to do to become a product manager, I would have told you to get a technical or business degree and about five years of experience in marketing and technology. This would be an honest answer, because it was to my knowledge the typical path one would take to achieve this career goal.

On the other hand, if you had asked me to share my story on how I became a product manager, I would have told you how I started in an engineering support role because I had some solid database background, but that I spent most of my time interacting with the sales department and helping them understand the nuances of the products we sold. Eventually I was recruited by the VP of Marketing for a market research job which I was not interested in, but I decided to ask if he’d be up for trying me out as a product manager and he was willing to.

Very different stories, right? Both completely true. The only reason they are different is because of the slight difference in the way you question me. Make it about you and I give you the standard industry line because I think that’s the safest and most practical advice I can give you. Make it about me, and I get to talk about me, which is fun, no pressure, and it’s a huge added bonus that my story helps you as well.

Which story is more useful?

Here is something to keep in mind when you are avoiding information interviewing:

You don’t know what you don’t know, AND you only have one mind, one set of life experiences, and perhaps two or three additional perspectives from conversations you’ve had. So it’s very likely that what you DON’T know is quite a lot more than what you DO know. And, you have a choice to make: you can move forward with what you do know and learn from your mistakes, OR you can talk to five people who have done this before you and learn from their mistakes.

I choose to learn from their mistakes, so I am now recommitting to at least having contacted the rest of the people I’d like to interview by the end of this week.

How are you doing?