What's Your Coffee Chat Conversion Rate?

Fellow student monkeys,

For those of you who have gone through the recruiting process or are currently going through it - what is your coffee chat conversion rate? How many people that you meet end up pushing your resume or being a referral for you?

I've seen numbers for cold emails vary from 1/10 to 1/5 as far as getting an initial response; sometimes even 1/50 or so, pretty crazy. Do you find most coffee chats to end up successful? My assumption is that once you've finally got them in front of you, it should be relatively "easy" to get to know someone and see if you could get some help or reference about recruiting with their firm.

Maybe your experiences can help others, comment below!

19 Comments
 

I don't send these out but I sure do get a lot of them :-) So far everyone is batting .000 with me on those - I have yet to see someone write me a compelling invite. Given the right invite, I would meet.

 
Best Response

Bonasera... Bonasera... What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? Had you come to me in friendship, then this scum in HR would be reading your resume this very day. This is the first time you came to me for counsel, for help. But let's be frank here: you never wanted my friendship. And uh, you were afraid to be in my debt.

But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather . . .

 

Conversion rate for coffee chats by the most superficial definition is 100%. Everyone that agrees to have coffee with you would help in one way or another ranging from pushing a CV to allowing you to mention then in your cover letter.

Conversion from recommendation to internship or interview is harder. Even if you wow the fuck out of someone, if the firm has strict and rigid hiring procedures then its very hard. This works better at smaller firms

 

In my opinion it's not about conversion rates after one conversation, but how the conversations I have lead to new connections that I may not have had access to before. As well, it's about reaching back out to the connections you made during recruiting season and updating them on where you are at.

At the end of every coffee chat, I always say "Thanks for your time, do you think there is anyone else I should reach out to that would be able to share their experiences with me as well?". This is a great way to expand your network without even really trying at all.

My conversion rate of people that I have chatted to just once and ended the connection? Very low. The conversion rate of people who have connected me with their colleagues? Significantly higher. The conversion rate of people who I have remained in touch with over the last ~8 months? TBD, but I'm certain that they would vouch for me if I ever found myself looking for a job at their firm in the future.

 

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