Linkedin and Coffee Dates

My husband recommended a long time ago, that I should contact people in my professional field and take them out to coffee and ask them about what they’ve experienced in the field and how they got to where they are now. That sounds easy enough right?

First off, it is a little awkward to contact someone that doesn’t know you, ESPECIALLY on a social networking site, where you are basically saying, “Hey, I’ve read your profile, it looks cool, can I take you out for coffee and learn more about your awesomeness?” I always feel like I’m some kind of stalker when I send out a message to a prospective person that I want to interview and learn more about their job and their path to where they are now. Maybe it’s just me?

Anyways, I did succeed at getting one coffee date, and it was a fantastic experience.

What I wrote in the Linkedin Message:

Because I go to Arizona State University (ASU), I concentrated on ASU alumni because people usually have an easier time responding if they can connect with you in some way.

“ I’m connecting with ASU alumni in the SF Bay Area & found your profile, looks very impressive. I am interested in going into HR, I was hoping to connect with you, you have an interesting background that I’d love to learn more about. Can we have a 15–30 min chat over a cup of coffee sometime?”

I got a reply that said essentially, “YES! I am free to get coffee with you.”

From there, we planned on meeting on a Tuesday at a local coffee shop near her office and the conversation with her was fantastic.

I had written some questions down on a piece of paper which helped the flow of the conversation and break the ice, but the majority of the time, the conversation with this person was as though I was talking to my husband. It came naturally, and she didn’t give me the feeling as though I was taking up her time or that she was in a rush. We talked about Arizona State University, and what she liked about the school, and we talked about me and my interest in psychology and mental health advocacy. At the end of the coffee “date” we exchanged emails and phone numbers and she even said she would look over my resume if I needed it (I haven’t taken her up on that yet, but probably will!).

Since then, I’ve messaged several other alumni and other people that are in the tech field or psychology field to ask if I could go on a coffee date with them-but with no reply.

This doesn’t mean, don’t try this method, but use this method because I take messaging about 10 people and getting 3 replies as a huge success. People are busy, people often don’t want to go outside of their circle of professional and personal acquaintances, and on something like Linkedin, people get a lot of SPAM messages.

People these days even say that networking is one of the ways you can certainly land a job in your field!

Try this form of networking…it’s worked for me. It might just work for you.

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