The informational interview

Networking calls are awkward. You have no leverage, the person has limited time, and you are trying to sound intelligent and build some kind of rapport at the same time, in fifteen minutes, with a stranger. Nobody is good at their first one. Almost nobody is good at their fifth.

The most common way they fail is not nerves and it is not a lack of preparation. It is that the student fires off a list of questions, the banker answers each one, and the call ends with two people who have exchanged information and formed no relationship at all.

Change what you are there for

Accept two things before you dial.

The referral, if it comes, is going to be a multi-stage process rather than the outcome of this one call. And it may not come at all.

What you definitely get, though, is fifteen minutes with somebody who does the job you are trying to get. That is worth having on its own. You get to find out what makes them tick, what their day is actually like, and, genuinely, whether this is a thing you want. Go in for that and the conversation relaxes, which is also the thing most likely to produce a referral later.

Prepare like an interview, behave like a conversation

Take the preparation seriously. Know what the firm does, know their sector, be able to speak intelligently about what is going on in the market. Have your own "tell me about yourself" ready to go in ninety seconds, because you will often be asked for it first.

You do not need to have memorised that firm X bought firm Y at a twenty-three percent premium. Nobody is going to grill you on technicals here. Being interested and being easy to talk to will do more for you than a statistic.

Then, having prepared like it is an interview, run it like a conversation. Those are not in conflict. The preparation is what buys you the freedom to stop performing.

Who should be doing the talking

Here is where the standard advice and our advice part company.

You will read, in most guides, that you are running the show and asking the questions. That is half right and the half it gets wrong is the half that ruins calls. You are running the logistics: you set the meeting, you keep it to time, you bring somewhere to go. But if you are doing most of the asking and they are doing most of the answering, you have built an interrogation.

So yes, have your professional questions written down and ready. Then treat the meatiest part of the call as this: ask them to tell you about themselves. And as they walk through their career, interrupt. Not rudely, but the way you would in a real conversation, picking up on specifics and asking about them.

Some questions worth having in your pocket, most of which are about the person rather than the firm:

• What originally got you interested in banking?
• How different was recruiting when you went through it, compared to now?
• If you could go back and give first-year-analyst you one piece of advice, what would it be?
• Who has had the biggest impact on your career?
• You have worked on a lot of deals. Which one are you proudest of?
• What is your favourite part of the day to day, and the most annoying part?
• What is the thing students never ask you about on these calls but should?

Keep some room for the standard territory too, because it is genuinely useful and it is what the call is nominally for: career path, where they see the industry going, what the culture is actually like, and what you could be doing now to prepare. Ask them open, and follow up on the answers rather than moving down your list. If you are actually engaged you will not need the list in front of you.

Ask for advice, then go and take it

This is the highest-return thing you can do on a networking call, and it is the one students skip.

Ask for advice directly. "You are roughly where I would like to be in five years, what would you tell me about getting there?" or "what should I be doing right now to prepare?" Then listen for anything actionable: read this, take that class, look at this group, speak to this person.

Then actually do it. Then tell them you did.

That last step is what buys the second conversation. It shows you took them seriously, it costs them nothing, and it hands you a completely natural reason to be back in their inbox three weeks later that is not "just following up."

The airport test

Underneath everything on this call is one unstated question, and it is the same one that runs under a real interview: could this person stand being stuck in an airport with you for six hours?

It is not a joke. Nobody is testing your technicals here. They are working out whether you are someone they could sit next to at one in the morning without it being exhausting. Which means that being a normal, pleasant, slightly curious human being is not a soft skill on this call, it is the entire assessment. There is more on that idea in what banks are really looking for.

Can you ask for the referral?

Most guides say never. Never ask for a job, never ask for an interview, do not overstep.

We think that is a little too absolute, and following it rigidly costs people opportunities. Here is the more useful version.

Do not go in for it, and do not let it shape the conversation. But if the call has genuinely gone well, and they have not brought it up themselves, it is not a sin to say you are seriously interested in applying and ask whether they would be able to help. That is a judgement call made in the moment on how the conversation actually felt, not a rule you can decide in advance.

What matters more is that there are two softer asks that work more often and cost you nothing:

• "Would it be alright if I reached out again with the odd question?" This keeps the door open and converts a one-off into a relationship.
• "Is there anyone else at the firm, or an alum from our school, you think would be worth me speaking to?" This is the one that compounds. It turns one contact into two, and the second one arrives warm.

Throughout, be humble and be thankful. You are asking for something and you know it.

Practicalities

Dress for it. If it is in person or on video, business formal unless they have told you otherwise, and conservative: a navy or charcoal suit, a white or blue shirt. Turning up in chinos opposite someone in a suit is uncomfortable and entirely avoidable. There is time to express yourself through your clothes once you have the job.

It is still an interview even when it is lunch. Do not order something you have to fight, and do not drink much.

Older guides will tell you to bring several copies of your resume on heavy paper. If the meeting is in person, fine, bring one. But most of these conversations now happen on the phone or over video, and in that world the equivalent is having your LinkedIn current and being ready to send your resume the moment somebody offers to pass it along.

Afterwards, which is not optional

The call is only half of it, and the half that most people drop.

Write down what was said and, specifically, what they suggested you do, while you still remember it. Advice evaporates otherwise. Written down, it becomes the next thing you do, and then the reason you write to them again.

Note whether they mentioned anyone else, and who. Rate how the call actually went. That last one sounds fussy for a single conversation, but you are going to have a lot of these, and a score against each one is what lets you see patterns you would never notice otherwise: which kinds of contacts go well for you, whether your calls with analysts land better than your calls with MDs, whether the ones where you talked less went better.

The Recruiting Hub has this built in for exactly that reason. When you log a live conversation it asks what you discussed, what they suggested you do, how you would rate it out of ten, and what the next step is and when it is due. It then tracks the relationship on a rhythm that follows their seniority rather than one global rule, so an analyst who offered to help resurfaces sooner than an MD you met once. Send the thank you from the same place and it is recorded as part of the same thread.

One last thing

Your first few of these will be clunky. Some people are easy to talk to and some are not, and a call that goes badly is very often just a mismatch rather than a verdict on you. Nobody gets on their first networking call and hits it out of the park.

So do not read too much into any one of them. Keep going, change one thing at a time, and let the volume do its work. Getting the calls in the first place is its own skill, and it is covered in how to get a networking call.