I suck at coffee chats.
Hello, I am starting my sophomore year and am starting to realize that I really suck at coffee chats. I'm not an outgoing person and like to have a small circle of long-time friends. It takes me a long time to get talkative and social with people, so I struggle being very social with people I've just met. I really need some advice on how to improve my coffee chatting skills and not come off as a bot.
Some things I do:
- I start off with some small talk, I prepare sets of questions for the person regarding their background, any advice they have, school, work, and some small firm/deal questions I do prior research on to make it seem like I did my homework
- I kind of force myself into a structure: couple minutes of small talk -> start with a brief intro on myself -> they introduce themselves too -> go into my questions
- I find myself not really listening or caring about the questions I ask them about. I just switch tabs to find the next question I can ask them about after regurgitating what they said to me
- After most chats I feel drained and tired. It feels so unnatural to me and it's like I am talking to them just to get it over with and say in the cover letter that I talked to somebody.
Honestly I'm not sure if it's because the chat's are online, or if it's because I try to stick to a structure and set of questions, but I feel like my chatting skills have really fallen compared to the first year of school. I had lots of great chats when I was doing them in person with older students in the industry. Some of my peers find lots of success going into chats without any specific questions prepared, but that's something I don't have any confidence in. How can I find the balance and improve? Please help me out.
Honestly sounds like you maybe just aren't asking the questions from a place of wanting to learn and understand their background. If you are coffee chatting a lot of people and using the same rehearsed questions over and over then yeah, it will get boring. I think going into a chat with some talking points or broad ideas of what you want to ask them about, but tailoring the questions based on what they bring up might work better for you and create more engagement on your end. If they bring up something interesting, just ask them about that and follow up on stuff you care about? Idk when I was doing lots of coffee chats I would have a few questions to fall back on but ultimately try and ask about stuff they brought up that I found interesting. At the end of the day, if they are just a boring person or don't really want to be in the chat but are doing it anyways for some reason then there's not a lot you can do, and it probably won't be that engaging. But it's out of your hands at that point anyways. I'd also say try and find something you both have in common that you would actually want to talk about (hobby, sport, etc). If the first 10-15 minutes of that chat is taking about something random who gaf, that's a meaningful connection either way.
Your third bullet point is why your coffee chats suck. The banker on the other end of the phone can definitely feel it so they probably become disinterested too. Here is how I recommend structuring your chat.
First 3-5 mins
Small talk (there are multiple ways to do this but I used to ask about the weather in their city, overall weekend vibes, goal is to just be a normal human)
Next 15 mins
Ask questions and give your thoughts to their answers. You should be interested in hearing about their experience because it will give you more color on whether that’s the type of group you want to work in. When you are just ticking off questions one by one, it appears robotic and the banker can tell. Try to create natural segues to different topics
Last 5 to 10 mins:
Try to get to know the bankers for who they are outside of their work. People love talking about themselves so you can ask about their hobbies, how they manage work-life balance, etc. Remember, you are interviewing them too. You shouldn’t approach these chats like you are trying to get a referral. Instead, you should be asking yourself “Would I work well with someone like this” and “Would this group be a fit for me”
Just my two cents but this structure helped me a lot and I connected well with most bankers.
be interested and be interesting
I have done hundreds of coffee chats and would like to think I have some expertise in this. If you’re bored during a coffee chat, you’re either not asking the right questions or not meeting with the right people.
Don’t ask someone about a deal they were staffed on if you’re not actually interested about it. Most of my questions stem from my curiosity about the team they’re on, city, overall bank, their previous jobs etc.
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