I believe that no matter where you are in your career path – beginner, experienced or advanced – it’s important to stay on your toes and nurture the quality of being naturally curious. As humans we all are born with this innate capability of curiosity. As children this quality is further pronounced as we try to engage with and explore the world around us. It’s through this formative emotion that represents a drive to investigate, understand, and learn new things while we go through life and experience things for the first time.

At every stage of our life, we all experience moments that are new and novel to us that require sense making. We attempt to tread that and learn about it in many ways, one of which we’ve all done as children – ask questions! Asking questions and quenching that curiosity centered on a new thing has been an age old tradition that we’ve all graduated from one stage to another as children to adults. It has helped us discover, challenge and stimulate our intellectual curiosity as we mature through the years.

Even through our vocational life, it’s equally important that we try to retain that quality that keeps the learning alive and informational interviews are a great way to achieve that. We all are gifted with the abundance of collective intelligence and knowledge bank gained from our existing network of smart, intelligent and experienced peers and seniors. Each one of us brings something unique to the table based on our background, skills and cultural sensibilities. So why not tap into that collective intelligence of your network to extend and strengthen your vocational learning?

Whether you are out there seeking your first break and trying to get a leg in after college, thinking of transitioning and making a complete career switch from one field to another or vying for the success ladder to get a promotion in your existing job, informational interviews can be a useful medium to help achieve that.

Important considerations – Although I address these types of meetings as ‘interviews’ there is a stark difference in these types of interviews with regular ‘job interviews’ and hence should be treated differently. The focus of this interview should be:

• Treat it as an opportunity for self-discovery and self-assessment
• Ask relevant questions centered on that person’s career, company and profession                          
• Explore the career opportunities that lie within
• Use it as an avenue to find your motivation and inspiration seeking advice from someone you admire
•  To network and build on a new contact
• Overall, really treat it as a learning ground to prepare, improve and build on your skills, qualifications and profession
• The most important differentiator being, do not treat this opportunity as a back-door entry to a job. Don’t go blatantly seeking a job, it can potentially put-off your interviewee and might result in cutting short your interview time, where you could’ve spent all that time asking great questions and getting to know your contact better!
• Keep an open mind, respect their time and always walk away thanking your contact for their time and advice.

If done right, you would’ve walked away not only having made a new contact, but someone who could potentially be your mentor down the road, with continued interaction

In addition to acquiring the standard job interviews, seeking the right informational interviews and having the ability to conduct these tactfully will in many ways catapult you and your career in the right direction. So don’t be afraid to ask questions and share that knowledge with your network. Wouldn’t you agree?

Photo by ankakay

With the advent of social media, there has been a lot of chatter about its usefulness as well as many raised eyebrows regarding its benefits. A lot of people are still left wondering, how and why social media is even important and relevant to what they do. Most people who are skeptical about joining the bandwagon want to first know what the ROI will be for investing their time in social media. Is it even worth the time or is it better left to the teenyboppers who pride themselves on updating their social status by the minute!?

I believe social media has something to offer everybody; it depends on how and to what extent you use it. It’s not a one-size-fits-all glove, but really depends on what you make of it and how willing you are to venture into it in the first place.

My personal ROI for investing in social media over the past several months has been very apparent. The most apparent return is that it has led me to a contract job opportunity at SAS. Here’s how social media helped me achieve that.

My initial escapades with social media started at a curiosity level, while I experimented with it on a trial and error basis. The truth is, I’m still exploring, as I still do not know or totally understand the full impact of these social media platforms. I started with what made me comfortable: I created a LinkedIn profile and filled out my background and skill sets. I also made it a point to upload a professional photo. I figured people register things better when they associate a visual against any data. I started building connections and strengthened my network online. This took a considerable amount of time, as I’d spend hours trying to research people and companies I admired and wanted to connect with.

I made it a point to customize my LinkedIn invite, which typically included a very short introduction, what I have in common with the contact, and why I would like to connect with them. I think it was this approach that gave me a better response rate in building new connections. I always tried to keep my end goal in mind, in this case it was building a stronger and richer network of people that I could emulate and learn from in my field of interest.

Twitter gave me the opportunity to follow these people, read what they tweeted about and even engage in those conversations with no strings attached! Twitter, like most social sites is merely a tool created for us to use at our own discretion. Garbage in is garbage out! If you wish to have fruitful and productive conversations, the onus lies on you to follow the right people you’d like to have real and interesting conversations with. Tune out the mindless chatter by creating lists of people you’d like to follow and focus on those.

Beware, though: What may have started as a 10-minute activity can easily turn into a couple of hours online spent toggling between a dozen or more tabs open on your monitor. So always keep track of time and make a hard stop using a timer (if need be) so you don’t go overboard with it. Time management is key here. Brief focused bursts of engagement online on a daily basis helps keep your profile active onscreen.

I tried to mix the old with the new methods of networking. While these tech-savvy social platforms helped give me the initial leverage to connect, I followed through with the old-fashioned way of meeting and greeting over coffee or with an informational meeting. This always helped make the interactions more human aside from our virtual connections. I’m grateful for these opportunities that social media platforms created for me allowing me to make new connections, while preserving old ones, and strengthening my online brand presence through each of these platforms.

While your goals may vary ranging from brand awareness, networking, relationship building, or strengthening customer connections, all it takes is an open mindset, adventurous spirit and the willingness to invest a small portion of your day on these sites, and the ROI can be huge in the long run.

What has been your experience using social media, how has it helped you?

Photo by Keith Burtis