chat it up (after getting the job)
You’ve worked hard to get the informational interviews, and once you’re on the job it’s a whole new ballgame to navigate who to reach out to. Here are some tips:
- Give yourself a 30 day period before reaching out. Get acclimated to your new environment and understand who the key players are.
- Be cognizant of your world. Some companies are very lateral and have open-door policies where you can email the CEO for coffee. Other places are much more hierarchical, where reaching out to executives are not as common. If the latter is the case, ask your manager for approval before reaching out to someone at a higher level.
- Be strategic. Start off meeting a few people and really target those who you can learn the most from vs. just reaching out to anyone.
- Have a plan. Think of some objectives for what you’d like the conversation to have. They can be to find out more about the person on an informal level, to understand their role, to get a better sense of company culture, etc.
- Follow-up. Make sure to send a thank you note afterwards via email or after adding them on LinkedIn. Who knows, you may look to join their group down the road and courteousness goes a long way!
