Informational Interview Questions After a Free Career Test
Use your career-test result to choose what you want to learn, then ask someone who does the work for a concrete example. Record whose experience you heard, where it applies and what remains unconfirmed. An informational interview can inform your research; it cannot validate a test score or certify that a career suits you.
Already have results? Start with the conversation evidence worksheet. If you need an interest starting point, take the free career interest test. QuizYourCareer's original quiz has not been validated and is not the official O*NET Interest Profiler. You do not need to disclose your scores to request a conversation.
Bring a research question, not a request to approve your result
An informational interview is a conversation about someone's work and experience. Berkeley Career Engagement recommends researching the field, preparing open questions, respecting the agreed time and keeping a record afterward. Learning about work is the purpose; a request for a job is a different conversation.
Choose a question your result prompted but did not answer. “I like finding explanations for problems; how does that happen in your role?” is more useful than asking a professional to confirm that a high interest score makes you the right kind of person for their occupation. A favorable response would still be their impression, not a measurement of your ability.
If you have no occupation in mind yet, use the career research shortlist worksheet to find roles worth investigating first. If the score itself is confusing, the RIASEC results guide explains the display and Holland code. This page starts where those tasks end: deciding what to ask a person and how to retain their answer accurately.
Prepare a question with an answer you can record
My starting point: I want to understand how [activity] happens in [role or setting].
My question: Could you walk me through a recent, shareable example of that activity, including what you did and what someone else handled?
My follow-up: Does that describe your current assignment, or something you also observed in other roles?
What I will record: The action, the boundary of the speaker's experience and the unresolved part. I will not convert the answer into a career-match score.
Keep a public job description or occupational profile beside your notes before the conversation. Mark what that document already answers and what you want the person to explain. Someone who performs the activity can discuss their experience; someone who supervises it may describe delegation or evaluation instead. Ask which perspective they are offering before treating those accounts as equivalent.
Request a conversation without handing over a test report
You can say: “I am researching work that involves [activity]. Your experience in [relevant role or setting] caught my attention. Would you be open to a brief conversation about how that activity appears in your work? I am gathering information, and I can work around the time you have available.” Replace the brackets with accurate details; do not invent a shared connection or claim to have read material you have not read.
Agree on the format and time in advance. Ask whether taking private notes is acceptable. Obtain explicit permission before recording audio, using a transcription service or sharing identifiable answers. If permission is declined, keep the conversation unrecorded. Ask for general, shareable examples rather than client names, private documents or confidential employer information.
Conversation evidence worksheet: keep the scope beside the answer
This is an original note-taking aid, not a validated assessment. Copy the fields into your own document, print this page or download the blank interview worksheet as a text file. The download is static; this page does not ask you to submit interview notes. Keep names and contact details out of any version you plan to share unless the person has agreed.
Before the conversation
- Activity or assumption to examine
- What exactly do I want to understand?
- Relevant public source
- Page title, URL and date checked; which part is still unclear?
- Speaker's perspective
- Role, level and setting if they are willing to share; firsthand practitioner, manager or another perspective?
- Permission and boundaries
- Private notes allowed? Recording or sharing separately agreed? Topics to avoid?
For each answer
- Question and answer
- Keep the question with the answer. Mark an exact quotation only if you captured it accurately; otherwise label it a paraphrase.
- Kind of statement
- Firsthand account, advice or prediction, secondhand report, or not clear. Ask rather than assigning certainty.
- Scope and date
- Which role, team, assignment or period is the speaker describing? Which details did they leave unspecified?
- What this supports
- A narrowly worded takeaway that retains those limits.
- What it does not establish
- The broader claim I cannot draw from this answer.
- Next check
- A clarifying question or independent source; leave the answer blank until checked.
“Not clear” is an acceptable entry. Do not fill a missing fact with something that seems typical. If a speaker says “people usually need this credential,” ask whether they mean a current formal requirement, something their own employer asks for, or a recommendation. A suggestion remains a suggestion until the relevant requirement has been checked.
Store a public source separately from the conversation account. A job posting shows what that employer advertised when you read it. A practitioner's account shows what they reported doing. If both mention an activity, that is a reason to investigate it further; it still does not establish how much of every job it occupies, or whether you will enjoy performing it.
Worked example: edit the note, not the speaker's meaning
Fictional teaching example: Casey is exploring work involving problem investigation after an interest quiz. Rowan and Ellis, their conversations and their workplaces below are invented. The dialogue illustrates record keeping; it is not evidence about an occupation, a real interview or a personalized recommendation.
The conversation
Casey: “Could you describe a shareable investigation you handled, and who decided what to do next?”
Rowan: “On my current service team, I reproduced a reported problem and wrote up what I found. Another team decided whether to change the product. In my previous assignment I handled more of the follow-through.”
Casey: “When you say that newcomers should learn the product first, is that a formal entry requirement?”
Rowan: “That is my advice. I am not involved in hiring, so I cannot confirm what the current requirements are.”
A note that goes too far
“This career is mainly investigation. New hires only need product knowledge. It is a good match for my quiz result.”
The note drops the team boundary, changes advice into a hiring rule and adds a fit judgment neither speaker established. These are editorial errors in Casey's note, not reasons to rewrite Rowan's answer.
A note that preserves the answer
Paraphrase: Rowan reports reproducing a problem and documenting findings in a current service-team assignment; a separate team chose the product response. Rowan describes different responsibility in a previous assignment.
Advice: Learn the product. Unconfirmed: Current hiring requirements; Rowan says they do not hire.
Next check: Ask who handles follow-through in the particular role Casey is researching, then check its current published requirements.
Casey can retain “investigation occurs in this described assignment.” Casey cannot retain “the whole career is investigative” or “the quiz predicted success.” There is no need to assign Rowan a credibility percentage. The useful change is a smaller claim with a visible boundary.
A follow-up that checks your own paraphrase
Casey could write: “Thank you for explaining the handoff. My notes say that you investigated and documented the issue on your current team, while another team chose the product response. Have I represented that distinction correctly? I have kept your preparation suggestion separate from current hiring requirements.” This is a draft illustration, not a message sent to anyone.
A correction from the speaker repairs your record of the conversation. It does not independently verify the broader claim. Keep an important disagreement in the notes instead of silently replacing the old version: “I first understood X; the speaker clarified Y.” That small history helps you see whether the uncertainty came from the work itself or from your interpretation.
When two people describe the work differently
Continue the fictional example. Ellis says, “In my assignment, I rarely investigate the reported issue myself. I coordinate people who do that.” Casey now has different accounts. Averaging the statements, counting which one sounds more enthusiastic or choosing the account that matches the test would discard the distinction that matters.
Keep both accounts visible
Rowan: Personally reproduced and documented a problem on a current service team. Another team decided the response.
Ellis: Coordinated other people who investigated in their assignment. Exact responsibilities and setting still need clarification.
Shared conclusion available now: These invented speakers describe different responsibilities. The example does not establish their frequency across employers.
Ask what would make the accounts comparable
“When you described coordinating investigators, which role and assignment did you mean? Would a person in the role I am researching carry out the investigation or organize someone else's work?”
Record the answer under Ellis's account. Then compare it with Rowan's role, assignment and period. If the details remain different or unavailable, preserve the disagreement and narrow your research question.
Use this reconciliation line in your notes: “The accounts differ on ___. They refer to ___ and ___. I can currently conclude ___. I still need ___ to determine whether this difference applies to the role I am considering.” An honest conclusion may be that the accounts are not yet comparable. You have learned which distinction to investigate without inventing a general rule.
Common questions
What should I ask at an informational interview after a career test?
Ask about the activity that prompted your interest, how responsibility for it is divided and which setting the answer describes. Use the question card above to ask for an example, then record the scope in the worksheet. Broader question banks from Berkeley and Yale's Office of Career Strategy cover duties, environment and preparation. Select what serves your research question rather than reading an entire list aloud.
Should I ask whether my interest code fits their career?
You can explain what you are exploring, but ask about the work rather than requesting a verdict on your code. An interviewee's opinion cannot turn an unvalidated quiz into a validated instrument or measure your skills. Discussing an actual activity also lets you learn without sharing a personal score report.
What if I cannot find someone willing to talk?
Keep the conversation column empty. Read public occupational profiles and employer descriptions, recording them as document research rather than an interview. Ask a career service or an existing contact whether they can suggest a willing person. Lack of a response supplies no evidence about your suitability, and a generated dialogue must never be presented as a real conversation.
How many conversations prove that a career is right for me?
There is no evidence in this guide for a qualifying number. Conversations can reveal questions and perspectives; they do not produce a validated individual fit score. Decide whether an account answers your particular question, and retain unresolved limits instead of claiming that a set of anecdotes proves the whole career is right.
Leave with an accurate record
Before filing your notes, finish this sentence: “I heard ___ from someone describing ___; it leaves ___ unconfirmed.” Thank the person for the specific explanation they gave. Keep the next verification attached to that record, so an appealing story does not gradually become an unsupported fact.
Written by QuizYourCareer. The question card, evidence worksheet, fictional dialogue, note correction and reconciliation exercise are original editorial tools. They are not psychometric instruments. University sources support the general interview practice; the teaching example supplies no real occupational statistics.