The Exploratory Interview

The other day a client asked me for some assistance with an upcoming exploratory interview. Being that this woman is always on top of things, she googled the phrase and found out that an exploratory interview is similar to the informational interview. That interview can be defined as a meeting usually prompted by the job seeker, to gather information about a job, career field, industry or company.

This time, my client was asked to participate in a forty minute informational or exploratory meeting with the department head of a brand new internal organization. She thinks it’s because she interviewed with this person several months ago, before he was tasked with organizing this new department. While she didn’t get the open position back then, she has kept in touch with him and lately emailed him a short note about a recent accomplishment. 
Perhaps this manager or someone else in the new group wants her to come in to get a feel for her background and experience as they relate to the new department.

I suggested that she prepare for this interview as she would for any other interview; the only difference is that she doesn't have a job description or listing of position responsibilities. Since the recruiters in her organization use a list of canned competencies or soft skills during every interview, she followed those as she discussed with me her general tasks, projects and accomplishments. She has interviewed before and is familiar with the STAR (Situation, Task, Actions, and Results) behavioral method so we rehearsed several examples of her accomplishments.
We also covered some basic interviewing questions such as:
Tell me about yourself.
What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?
Where do you see yourself in five years?
This department will be tasked with ____. How do you see yourself and your skill set fitting in?
Finally, we came up with a list of questions to ask the interviewer. They included:

1. Will you be hiring for a particular position? (This might come out in the exploratory interview but if not, ask ).
2. What skills are needed to succeed?
3. What is the one skill that is needed for this position that I might be missing? How would you suggest that I correct it?
4. What advice would you give to a newcomer to your department? What mistakes do you think newcomers make when they start in your department?h

In the end we found that like any interview, preparation is key for the exploratory interview. You may not know the questions that will be asked but your preparation will go a long way in determining your confidence and grace under pressure.