How to coffee chat
Why few coffee chats lead to referrals and what you can do about it
We’ve all been there — hat in hand and fresh out of college, we reach out to alums from our school hoping to land our first entry level position.
First step — the proverbial coffee chat. A chance to get onto somebody’s good side, get a referral to a job, and hopefully an interview.
So off you go to the coffee chat. The chat goes well and you feel good about your chances of getting an interview.
You don’t get an interview.
Prior to graduation, I wanted to work in corporate law, a field where connections do matter.
A few connections made through a previous internship got me in the door of partners’ offices at large Midtown Manhattan law firms where I had great coffee chats, but none led to interviews.
I now know why, and it is that knowledge that has brought about in me a different perspective on coffee chats.
The point of a coffee chat is not so you can get onto somebody’s good side and then through goodwill obtain a referral to a job.
The point of a coffee chat is for you to understand the needs and problems of those who are hiring in your industry. What problem or problems are they trying to address through hiring?
Usually, it’s work that needs to be done but can’t currently be done because of expertise constraints or capacity issues. Most businesses after all don’t spend money looking for new hires without an existing need for work to be done. Work that needs to be done but isn’t currently being done represents an unmet need, a problem in the eyes of the organization and a problem assigned to a hiring manager.
So unmet needs and coffee chats. Where’s the link?
Coffee chats give you the opportunity to gain a general understanding of the needs and problems faced by people who work in the industry in which you want to work. Understand what those needs and problems are, and you can from them deduce the skills and expertise required to solve the problems and meet the needs of your chosen industry.
To give an example, on the customer acquisition side of tech, a common problem is finding users for your product. Users help generate revenue for a startup and keep a startup going since usage is a sign of progress. When a startup hires, sometimes the problem to be solved is getting more users for their product, and from that problem is a need for someone with proven expertise in recruiting new users for a product. If I were looking for a job in tech to do with product and growth, I would first try to understand my own experiences to do with growing product usage and then be sure to be able to articulate what I can do on growing usage before going on any coffee chats with hiring managers or people who know hiring managers.
That’s what leads to referrals.
Remember — people who are hiring are hiring so they can solve a problem or meet a need they have. Define how you can solve that problem or meet that need, and what work you can do, and you dramatically increase your chances of getting hired.
