Coffee Chat — We’re not coffee-drinking, but coffee-networking
Coming from a society with a different culture, I never thought it was so normal to host coffee chats with every current and potential connection. Actually, I’d never thought that a coffee chat could be that helpful to our career, until someone scheduled one with me and I provided so much information she was looking for. Then I found the key point: if others could benefit from what I tell them, why can’t I gain something in the same way?
Actually, as someone who has AS(Asperger Syndrome), I didn’t comfortable with the phrase “coffee chat” at the very beginning. This name gave me the impression, that it’s very informal, during which we just talk from the real world atoms to the spiritual chakra, then time flies. However, after researching, I found the truth: “being informal doesn’t mean being helpless.”
So, what can we get from a 15–30min coffee chat?
1. Knowing someone who could potentially become not only our friend, but also a mentor
Confucius said, “When three people meet together, one of them who is anxious to learn can always learn something from the other two.” That’s also the reason why we want to expand our network. I’m sure that everyone reading my blog is a lifetime learner, so when we know more people, we have more “living libraries” from which we could find more knowledge, and add it to our brains. Also when they just got to know something, they’ll have willing to share them, and if we could be the people listening to them, we’ll be the first ones who got in touch with some news.
2. Gaining information about current or future company
This follows the logic of the previous point, but is more specific. When we meet with someone from a company at a career event, or just joined a company, it will be important for us to study it. What’s the culture? Does it fit me? How is the reskill/upskill process? Who will be someone who can help us in some aspects? We don’t want to keep being fresh at a company for a super long time; the earlier we get familiar with the environment, the easier we could succeed in this company.
3. Knowing more experience and suggestions which are not written in books
One thing we all know is: not all knowledge is recorded in books or cyberspaces. For example, bugs assigned to a specific software or hardware environment is not frequently happening in other developers’ workspaces, which means it is not a general problem. Also, a company won’t be happy if we tell others about such developing properties. So a coffee chat will be crucial for us to know suggestions and experience about predicting, avoiding, and solving the problems that only happened in this company’s code base. It will save us a lot of time.
4. Ways to more opportunities!
Opportunities — everyone loves them. Most of us already know the importance of being prepared for opportunities, however, if there are not enough opportunities, the outcome is still zero. Also, let me tell you one truth I got from a career fair: more than half of job opportunities do not appear in job posts, like Indeed, LinkedIn, etc. So, coffee chats will expose ways to these opportunities to us, since the people who chat with might know you more than a random interviewer, and has a higher possibility to evaluate you as someone qualified.
Important habits for a coffee chat
Now we know how much we can expect from the coffee chat. But don’t forget one thing: although it’s informal, it doesn’t mean it’s a free chat with other gamers on Discord. Time is money, and we must show our respect to the person who spent their time for us.
So what should pay attention to for a coffee chat?
1. Research their background before talking to them
I see a lot of people ask “Which company are you from” during the coffee chat, but… If I’m sitting on the other side I’ll feel very weird: “You want to ask me about my career/my company, and you didn’t know where I’m from?” So instead of asking such questions, we need to find out the answers, which are the fundamental information, before this chat, so we’ll be ready for the following point:
2. Valuable questions
Don’t forget that we’re the ones seeking information, which means we won’t waste our and others’ time on useless answers. That’s why we have to list some questions we want to ask a specific person. The questions should reflect our requirements, and should fit the background of the one we are chatting with — for example, asking an HR person questions like “your coding experience” is mostly not a good idea.
3. Attitude
Yes, the attitude. We know it’s informal, and just like I mentioned above, we know we want to gain some information from others. However, don’t show too much utilitarianism since it will make others think “this person is emphasizing what I have more than myself?”. Thus, I’ll suggest showing more “Humanism”: giving others the impression that we really appreciate not only their questions, but also knowing such a great person. If possible, we could also provide the information we have, to make the coffee chat obviously positive-sum, instead of zero-sum which means one of them is purely giving but not receiving useful things.
That’s all about my experience and thinks, after having some coffee chats. It’s all about the logic that: “Not formal, not useless, not free-chat”. Hope this could be helpful to anyone who is feeling tough with the coffee chats!
