Dear Experts,
Regarding the call in "Ask the Experts: Programmer Applicant's Checklist" (July 23, 2007) for potential applicants to "request for an information interview," how would you suggest doing this? Writing the HR department with a generic request, finding a specific employee?

Thanks.
S. A.

Dear S. A.,
Yours is a very good question.

About a year ago at a conference, I was sitting near a fairly prominent game designer, waiting for a lecture to begin. A young man noticed him, approached him, and told him that he had aspirations to one day become a game designer himself. He asked would it be okay for him to call this game designer up and "pick his brain." The designer said, "Well, what do you want to ask me?" The young man said, "I just would like to, you know, chat about designing video games for maybe 30 minutes or so." I think he offered to buy him lunch.

The game designer politely but firmly said, "I'm sorry. No. If I spent the day chatting with every student who wanted to just talk to me, I would never get any work done."

That scenario is an example of someone looking for an informational interview, though sadly, it took a few wrong turns. He didn't quite understand what an informational interview is, and that fact was made prevalent in the way he went about asking for one. Still, I give the young man credit for trying. Remember, in anything that requires persistence (including getting a job in the game industry), you might have to hear "no" a hundred times before you hear "yes." But, each time you hear "no," be sure to pause and think about whether you need to tweak your approach, or perhaps your intended goal.

What is an Informational Interview?
Before we talk about how to get an informational interview, let's make sure we know what one is.

An informational interview is an informal discussion with someone who knows about something that you would like to know more about. A typical informational interview is one that takes place between a person who currently works in a specific career and someone who would like to work in that field.

Often, the problem with matching up two people in this way is that the person who's curious doesn't know what kinds of questions to ask the person with all the knowledge. Usually, people who agree to participate in informational interviews know this and are willing to guide the questioner toward topics that will be of use.

An informational interview is not a sit-down with the most prominent person in a given field. In fact, it's probably directly unhelpful to hold a Q&A session with someone who is outright famous in the career you're interested in pursuing.

Informational interviews are not practice job interviews and equally, they are not to be used as networking opportunities for future jobs at the interviewed person's company (that may coincidentally happen, but never go into an informational interview with the assumption that you might get a job interview as a direct result).