How to Run an Investment Banking Coffee Chat
A coffee chat is an interview in disguise. What to ask, how to prepare, the email template to use, and the mistakes that kill your shot at a referral.
Coffee Chat Fundamentals
A coffee chat is a 30-minute conversation with a banker: casual in tone, evaluative in function. Treat it as an interview no matter how it was framed.
You are there to do four things:
- Collect intelligence you will reuse later: why this firm material, how the group recruits, what the seat is like
- Turn the banker into an ally
- Form your own read on the group: culture, deal flow, whether you would want to work there
- End by asking who else you should speak to
First rounds go to candidates someone inside is pushing, and that push starts here. The names you leave with become your next chats.
Keep it a friendly professional conversation: cheerful, positive, prepared. You are there for advice, and you actually want the answers. Bankers advocate for people they enjoyed talking to; the referral takes care of itself.
Preparation
What you need before the first email goes out:
- The person. LinkedIn plus one news search: background, career path, recent deals. This is where the specific reason in your outreach email comes from.
- Your narrative. Tell me about yourself opens almost every chat, and why banking follows. Build both in advance.
- Your questions. What works varies by level: an analyst, a VP, and an MD can each answer different things. Build yours in advance from the question guide.
- The firm. Recent deals and news. Demonstrate interest, not expertise.
Outreach
Your school or club channel comes first: recruiters expect you to use it, and clubs have rules about who contacts whom. When you are given a format to follow, follow it exactly. No school pipeline? Alumni database, LinkedIn, cold email. Start with alumni near your level; a thoughtful analyst or associate conversation beats a generic MD cold email.
Before you send anything, look at what the banker sees when your request lands. A banker who spent five years taking these calls said a LinkedIn with no photo and no school reads as someone there is no reason to take seriously, and the request gets declined. Photo, school, current role, filled in. Attach your resume for the same reason: with no resume in the thread, they may not bother taking the chance on you.
The email: who you are, one specific reason you want this person, three 1-hour windows, resume attached. Under five sentences.
Windows follow one rule: weekdays, 8 AM to 8 PM, in their time zone. Start them on the hour or the half hour: 2:00 or 2:30, never 2:15. Block each one on your own calendar the moment the email goes out, and keep it blocked until the banker picks or the thread dies. Offering a time you no longer have burns the contact. Convert before you write (West Coast emailing a New York desk: your 5 PM is their 8 PM, the edge of the window) and name the zone every time ("2:00 PM ET").
No reply after five to seven business days: follow up once. Persistence is expected; pestering is not.
When a chat ends with a referral (the ask in The Call below), the next email leads with the referrer's name:
Meeting Setup
When they pick a window, confirm the same day and send the calendar invite from your side. The booked call follows the same weekday, 8-to-8 rule. Attach the resume again: the invite is what they open when the call starts.
Make sure the Zoom link lets them join without friction, and set the meeting so you admit participants yourself, in case someone else ends up with the link. Lead with Zoom; if they would rather do a phone call or meet in person, their preference wins.
Bankers no-show. Assume the call slipped through the cracks: reply that you understand, offer to reschedule, and send a fresh set of windows. Do not move on while they keep scheduling time with you.
The Call
The first few minutes carry more weight than the rest. The person on the other side usually knows inside the first five minutes, sometimes inside two or three, whether this is going somewhere, and the call adapts from there, the way the GRE or the GMAT adjusts to how you are doing. A weak open buys you a politer version of the call you wanted.
Early in one of mine, the other person mentioned their in-laws were in town. I said something like, that has got to be rough. It turned out they get along great. I said let's talk about the market, and it never really recovered. Do not open with a joke that needs an assumption about someone's life to land.
The arc is simple: introductions, your questions, and, when it goes well, actual conversation. Your narrative opens, your questions carry the middle, and the last two minutes are for the ask: "Who else should I be speaking with?" When it went well, go one further and ask them to connect you over email.
Tune the questions to the seat. An analyst who is burned out does not want your hardest technical question. Go find common ground and be a decent thirty minutes of their day. An associate, VP, or MD rewards homework: work out what they cover and what they have closed, then ask about one of those deals. How did you win the mandate. What was the hard part.
Two kinds of questions land badly and you will not see it coming. Anything that invites a bad memory, like the worst day they ever had in banking, which for some people is genuinely traumatic. And anything that probes a change on their LinkedIn, because a move between firms is not always a move they chose. If you want the culture read, ask who has been the most supportive person on their team, and how. Same information, and nobody has to relive anything.
What kills a call: monologuing about yourself, rambling past the glazed-eyes look, asking about compensation, your chances, or the referral. Hit a nerve and you will see it. Redirect, and stay off that topic in later conversations.
The rule underneath that: if you want advice, ask for money, and if you want money, ask for advice. Here the money is the offer. So ask for advice.
Someone I know is international, with strong private equity experience, and he came across as very serious and buttoned up, with none of his personality showing. My sense is that it hurt him. Stay a little loose, which is difficult.
Write down what stuck the moment you hang up. The thank-you email needs one specific detail, and it fades fast.
Follow-Up
Thank-you email within 24 hours: reference something specific they said.
After that, check in occasionally with something worth sending: a relevant article, an update on your recruiting.
From Chat to Interview
One conversation rarely converts; run several per target firm, especially at boutiques where networking is mandatory.
How many is not fixed. Most of the people I know who landed at JP Morgan did more than 20. I reached final rounds at one bank off a single chat and a single first round, and another firm ran a structured process and simply told me the three people I would be speaking with. You do not find out which of those you are in until it is over, so plan for the high end.
Next: see how chats feed the funnel in The Recruitment Pipeline.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Start with your school or club channel if you have one, since recruiters expect you to use it and clubs have rules about who contacts whom. If there is no school pipeline, use the alumni database, LinkedIn, or cold email, and start with alumni near your level: a thoughtful analyst or associate conversation beats a generic MD cold email. Keep the email under five sentences with a subject line like '[School] Informational Call': who you are, one specific reason you want to speak with this person, three 1-hour windows, and your resume attached. Offer weekday windows between 8 AM and 8 PM in their time zone, start them on the hour or the half hour, and name the zone every time. Block those windows on your own calendar the moment the email goes out, because offering a time you no longer have burns the contact. If there is no reply after five to seven business days, follow up once. Persistence is expected; pestering is not.
Build your questions in advance and tune them to the seat, because an analyst, a VP, and an MD can each answer different things. Two categories are worth knowing about before you get on the call: questions that invite a bad memory, and questions that probe something on their LinkedIn they may not have chosen. Both land badly and you will not see it coming, and both have safer versions that get you the same information. Stay off compensation, your chances, and the referral itself, and save the last two minutes for the one ask that matters: who else you should be speaking with.
Yes. Coffee chats are casual in tone but evaluative in function. Bankers assess your preparation, communication skills, and genuine interest, and the first few minutes carry more weight than the rest of the call. Treat every chat as an interview regardless of how it is framed. These conversations are pipeline components: they generate first-round interviews, especially at boutique firms where networking is mandatory.
The number is not fixed, and it varies more by firm than most advice admits. Some processes are structured and short; others expect a long run of conversations before anyone puts you forward. You do not find out which one you are in until it is over, so plan for the high end. One conversation rarely converts, so run several per target firm, especially at boutiques where networking is mandatory. First rounds go to candidates someone inside is pushing, and that push starts in these conversations, so end every chat by asking who else you should speak to.