You will be able to hold three conversations with people in your target field and write down what you learned.
Arjun used to teach and now wants to move into corporate learning and development; Arjun and everyone Arjun speaks to below are invented examples. Arjun had read a lot about informational conversations, which is the easy part, and still found the hard part was actually having them. Most of that difficulty sits in the first message, which feels like a much bigger step than it turns out to be.
You have done enough preparing at this point. The task now is three real conversations with people working in the field you are aiming for. Your own time adds up to about forty-five minutes in total, an estimate. On the calendar it stretches over a few weeks, since replies take a while and each person has a schedule of their own to fit you into.
Draw your three names from the network map in Lesson 7.1, You already have a network, or from anyone you have been introduced to. Aim for three different levels of seniority. Each level gives you a different view of the same field.
Start with someone a year or two ahead of you in the role you want. Getting in is recent enough for them to remember it clearly, and they can describe what the first year is really like. Next, find someone more senior, for example a team lead or a manager. People at that level know what employers look for, how hiring decisions are reached and which way the field is moving. Last, look for someone who came in from a different career. A switcher can explain which parts of their earlier experience counted, what they had to pick up from scratch and what they would change if they did it again.
For Arjun, the person a little ahead was Priya, a former teaching colleague now two years into learning and development at a hospital group. The senior person was Marcus, who leads a training team at a bank. The switcher was a woman who had moved from nursing into clinical education, and Arjun only met her because Marcus made the introduction.
Follow the approach in Lesson 7.2, Ask for twenty minutes of advice, and keep the message brief. It needs three things: how you came across the person, what about their path interests you, and a request for twenty minutes.
Have three or four questions ready for each conversation, matched to the person's level. Ask the person a year or two ahead how they got in and what their first year involved. Ask the senior person what they look for when they hire and what makes the good candidates stand out from everyone else. Ask the switcher what carried over from their old work and what did not.
Once you are talking, your job is mostly to listen. As a rough guide, the other person should be speaking for most of the conversation. Give them a sentence or two about your background so they can shape their advice to you, and leave your full story out. Finish within the time you asked for.
Before you say goodbye, ask each person who else you ought to speak to. Chasing every name is optional, but asking keeps the chain going. If all three conversations give you one new name each, you have a pipeline of people to talk to across the next month. Marcus pointed Arjun to the clinical educator. Priya passed on the name of an e-learning designer at a consultancy, which opened up a direction Arjun had never thought about.
Sit down and write within an hour of each conversation, while you can still recall the detail. Memory fades quickly, and the exact words someone used are often worth more than anything else you bring away. Half a page per person is about right, set out under four headings: the work itself, how people get in, anything that surprised you, and names or next steps. If anyone talks about skills, write that down too, since it may change your market sheet.
Arjun's half page on Marcus read:
Work: the team spends most of its time designing short programmes for frontline staff rather than long courses. Getting in: teachers are taken seriously but need to show they can design for adults and measure whether training changed behaviour at work. Surprise: almost every programme now has an online component. Next steps: speak to the clinical educator; look into instructional design courses that end in a portfolio piece.
When all three conversations are done, open the direction shortlist from Lesson 1.4, Shortlist your directions. Go through each direction that came up and check it against what you heard. Look at whether any score should move up or down, whether the biggest gap is different from what you had assumed, and whether a direction you had not listed has appeared. Beside every change, write one line saying why you made it.
Arjun kept the interest score for corporate learning and development high. The gap was where the picture shifted. Arjun had expected it to be credentials, but all three people said the real gap was evidence of being able to design for adults. So Arjun rewrote the gap and replaced the 30-day test with a new one: designing a short workshop for adult volunteers at a community centre. Priya's contact also led Arjun to add e-learning design to the shortlist as a possible second direction.
You have finished when three conversations with people at three different levels are behind you, each has about half a page of notes written within the hour, you hold at least one new name to contact, and your shortlist is updated with a line explaining every change. Send your first request today in the activity, because replies take time.
Hold three conversations, write half a page of notes on each, and change your direction shortlist to reflect what you learned.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).