The 3 Pillars of a successful coffee chat

🔵 Coffee chats, when done right, can serve as gateways to incredible career opportunities.

It sounds a bit dramatic but it’s true. My career milestones, from landing my 1st ever internship to getting my full-time, all resulted from coffee chats.

Okay so they’re great, but how do you navigate them? What questions should you ask?

Well, after having over 200 coffee chats over these past 2 years, these are the 3 things I always do to make sure I get value from my talks.

I’ve listed these 3 key pillars below, do you use any of them? 👇

🦜 Topic: 3 Pillars of a Successful Coffee Chat

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The #1 mistake I’ve seen most people, especially young interns make, is focusing on the outcome of a coffee chat.

A coffee chat is meant to be a discussion that provides valuable insights which help to build meaningful connections that can advance careers.

The key word here is “CAN”.

Coffee chats don’t guarantee anything, so don’t expect anything.

Remember, a person with an agenda is easy to spot. No recruiter (or person in general) wants to feel like they’re being used.

To have a good coffee chat, you need an interesting conversation.

And to have an interesting conversation, you need to ask interesting questions.

Here’s a simple way to form a decent question.

Ignore “yes” or “no” questions like the plague

If you requested the coffee chat, it is YOUR responsibility to create an interesting conversation. Ask a boring question, and you’ll get a boring response.

To avoid this, ask what, how, or why questions so that the person has to think about their response.

Here’s an example, instead of asking:

Ask this:

Your first coffee chats probably won’t yield anything.

But the 2nd or 3rd might. That’s why you must leave a lasting impression on the 1st one.

Here are 3 things you should do at the end of a coffee chat:

Highlight 1 or 2 things you found valuable from the talk

Express that you’d like to chat again sometime

Ask them if they have any contacts you could reach out to

Closing Thoughts:

Every coffee chat is different, so take the advice above with a grain of salt.

These 3 pillars have worked for me, consider them for your next coffee chat and see if they work for you too!

See you next Tuesday 🤝

-Michael Ly

🤖 ChatGPT will soon be able to remember things you discussed across all your chats

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🎨 This website lets you use AI to create side decks in minutes!

If you haven’t already, try out a running club!

I don’t know what it is, but they’re exploding in popularity this summer, and it’s a great way to meet new people in a casual environment.

I’ve gone 3 times now and it’s starting to feel like a friend group!

P.S. - People are also calling running clubs the new dating scene. 😂

I love this post by Jen Gray on how to answer the “tell me about yourself” question in interviews.

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