NETWORKING
You finally get the coffee chat.
Thirty minutes.
A consultant from the office you want.
You prepare twenty questions so there will never be an awkward silence.
There is just one problem.
A good coffee chat should probably not get through your list.
If question six leads somewhere interesting, question seven can wait.
The goal is not to complete an interview.
It is to have a conversation worth continuing.
The safest questions are often the easiest ones to forget
“What is a typical day like?”
“Why did you choose consulting?”
“What do you like about the firm?”
Perfectly reasonable.
Also very easy to answer with the same response the consultant has given ten students before you.
The stronger questions usually contain a point of view, a choice, or a moment.
- What surprised you most in your first six months?
- What took you longest to get good at?
- What does a strong first-year consultant do differently?
- When did the job start feeling different from what you expected?
- What part of the work is hardest to understand before joining?
Notice what changed.
You are asking for experience, not a brochure.
For more examples of questions that create better conversations, read Good vs Bad Coffee Chat Questions.
Your master’s background gives you better questions than you may realise
You do not need to pretend you know the consulting industry already.
Use the transition you are actually trying to make.
- How did you translate your graduate-school experience during recruiting?
- Which skills from your degree became unexpectedly useful on projects?
- What did you have to unlearn when you entered consulting?
- Did clients care about your technical background as much as you expected?
- How did you decide between specialist and generalist opportunities?
Those questions do two jobs.
They give you useful information.
And they help the consultant understand what you are trying to figure out.
A good question reveals something about you too.
Then the conversation should become more specific
If the consultant works in your target office or practice, move closer to the actual work.
- What types of problems has your office been solving recently?
- How does staffing work for junior team members?
- How much choice did you have over your early projects?
- What does a new consultant usually own independently?
- What makes someone easy to work with on an engagement?
Now you are no longer asking, “What is consulting?”
You are asking, “What does succeeding there actually look like?”
That is a much more interesting conversation.
| Question type | What you may get | What you really want |
|---|---|---|
| Generic firm question | Public information | Personal interpretation |
| Recruiting question | A process description | What mattered in their case |
| Culture question | “People are great” | A concrete team behaviour |
| Career question | Job-title progression | Decisions and trade-offs |
Five questions belong near the end... but one of them may change everything
The final part of the conversation is where students often panic.
The clock says five minutes.
Time to ask for the referral?
Not necessarily.
Try:
- If you were recruiting from my program now, what would you do differently?
- Is there one weakness you often see in master’s applicants?
- What would you focus on before submitting an application?
- Is there anyone with a similar background whose path you think I should learn about?
- What is one question I should have asked you but did not?
That last one is unusually useful.
Because it lets the consultant tell you what they think matters.
For a broader structure for preparing, running, and following up after these conversations, read Informational Interview With Consultant.
But do not ask all twenty
Seriously.
If you fire through them one after another, the coffee chat becomes an interrogation.
Ask one.
Listen.
Use the answer.
If they say their master’s coursework mattered less than the client project they completed, follow that thread.
“What was different about the project?”
“What part did recruiters seem most interested in?”
“Did that also become something you used in interviews?”
Now the conversation is building on itself.
The best next question is often not on your list.
And that may be the clearest sign the coffee chat is working.
You prepared twenty questions so you would never run out of things to say.
A strong conversation does something better.
It makes you forget you had twenty.