Networking and informational interviews can help a job candidate stand out in a crowded pool of applicants. Students and postdocs often ask how I got my first offer for a position in the pharma industry. I give credit to networking and informational interviews. Here is my story.
Applying for the job
Several years into my postdoc fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, my long-distance (6 years!) husband and I were attempting to reunite geographically. We had just made the decision for him to move across the country for his next career move. Therefore, I had a specific location to target for my own career move.
I had come across a job opening for an epidemiologist that was posted online at my current company. Even though I knew very little about the actual work of an epidemiologist in a pharma company, I applied anyway.
Networking and informational interviews
Immediately after I hit the Submit button to send my resume and cover letter into the great human resources abyss, I started to the work on networking and informational interviews.
I searched my LinkedIn network for anyone who worked at that pharma company. Lucky for me, I had one result. Let’s call him Jim, as he doesn’t know I am writing about him here. Jim was my classmate from grad school, and he had just started a job at this company a couple months ago!
Thus, I sent a quick email to Jim. It went something like this: “Hey, Jim, how are you? I see on LinkedIn that you’ve made the transition to industry, and I actually just applied for a position (Requisition #) in your company. Do you happen to know the hiring manager? I would love to get connected and learn more about whether the position is a good fit.”
I was hoping that Jim remembered me. After all, we weren’t close in grad school. We had worked in a big student group on a few difficult biophysics problems sets. Indeed, those tedious homework sessions were mainly blocked from my memory, and he might not have remembered either!
Thankfully, Jim is a super nice guy. Moreover, he also had an incentive, as my company offers a generous bonus for any employees who refer successful candidates for hire. Jim connected me with the hiring manager and submitted a referral into the internal job portal.
Normally, I would have requested an informational interview over the phone. However, I was planning to interview for a job at a university located in the vicinity of this pharma company. And importantly, the university would not provide reimbursement for travel expenses. Thus, paying out-of-pocket gave me an incentive to squeeze as much as I could from the cross-country trip.
Making the request
I emailed the hiring manager and told him that I had applied for his epidemiologist position. Then, I truthfully admitted that I had limited knowledge about epidemiology in pharma. But I was going to be in town, so would he be available for a quick coffee chat with me so that I could learn more about his work and what he was looking for in the ideal candidate?
Editorial note: Not sure how to request an informational interview? Check out our helpful email templates.
He agreed to a 30-minute in-person meeting in his office. He described his educational and professional background and as well as some of the responsibilities of his group. I shared a little about the work that I had been doing in my postdoc fellowship. In addition to telling him why I was interested in pursuing a position in industry, I had also prepared a list of questions to ask him.
I must have made a positive impression during this informational interview. Because when our 30 minutes was up, he asked if I had some additional time on my schedule to spare so that he could introduce me to one of the epidemiologists he managed in his group.
Therefore, I got a 2-for-1 deal out of this visit. Of course, I did have to conduct another informational interview without any real preparation. However, I think showing genuine interest in the other person’s work can go a long way.
After the informational interview
After my trip, I followed up with thank you emails. In my short notes, I included how I thought my interests and experience might be a good fit for the responsibilities of the job.
Several weeks went by before the hiring manager reached back out to me. He said that he was conducting phone screens of the job candidates for his open position. However, because we had already met, he was automatically sending me to the next round of phone interviews.
Final thoughts on networking and informational interviews
Eventually, I went through the lengthy interview process and received a job offer.
Could I have arrived at the destination without having been introduced to the hiring manager through Jim? Possibly. Did I really need to do the networking and informational interviews? Maybe not. But I do believe that using my network and taking the extra step to show that I was serious about learning more about the job opening were key to making a lasting impression and standing out among the sea of other qualified candidates.