Are you graduating from college this month without a job? About 50% of the “successful” recent grads I studied for my recent book Graduate to a Great Job didn’t know what they wanted to do for work when they got their diploma.

So stop beating yourself up if you don’t know yet. But it’s time to take action.

The best way to bring focus to your job search is to start doing informational interviews right away. Maybe you’ve heard this term and you’re rolling your eyes or maybe it’s a new concept to you. Either way, these interviews are your most powerful tool for learning what kind of job you want and where job openings might be.

Here’s how Ryan, a finance grad from Fordham University, used these conversations to clarify what he wanted to do.

“I had become more interested in picking stocks, taking a more active role in financial investing, what they call “the buy side.” A friend of my father’s put me in touch with some people in the business, and we talked by phone about how the investing process had changed in the industry. At that point, I was trying to figure out if I wanted to work on the buy side, and what sort of experience I needed to get.

“I also had a friend a year ahead of me in school who worked at Citigroup’s investment bank. We met for lunch and he offered me a lot of advice on going through the investment job search process. But you can’t rely on one person’s advice. So I talked to any other sources I could find. My Dad put me in touch with a guy running a commodities consulting firm in New York who had unique insights about industry hiring trends.”

Here are two things you need to know to start setting up informational interviews today:

 Never Ask For A Job. These conversations are low risk because you are asking for something everybody can give you—the story of their career so far and advice based on their experience. You are not asking for a job. This is very important. Probably 99.5% of the time, people don’t have a job to give you, anyway. So, if you ask them for one or where to find one, they have to turn you down. If you ask people for something they can’t give you, they feel bad. But ask for something they can easily give you—advice—and they feel great, if they think it’s helping.

Prepare Questions. Always go into an informational interview with questions to get the other person talking about their work, their experiences and any advice they can offer you about getting started in a particular type of business. (And, of course, you’ll be taking notes.) You can develop your own questions based on what you’re trying to learn at this stage of your job search. Here are six questions to get you started:

• How did you get into investment banking?
• What do you like most/least about your work as a swordfish boat captain?
• How do people get started in nuclear reactor operations? What are the entry-level possibilities for someone like me?
• What would you do if you were in my shoes trying to find work in journalism today?
• Can you think of two or three other people I might speak with to learn more about becoming a concert promoter?
• May I use your name when I contact them?

Informational interviews play a different role when your job search becomes more focused on finding specific opportunities. But the approach is always the same, and these interviews are a key part of virtually all successful job searches today. In a future post, I’ll offer a script guaranteed to get you these meetings. Subscribe to this blog, “From Panic to Paycheck,” if you don’t want to miss it.