Networking Overload? 4 Tips for Handling All Those “Coffee Chat” Requests

A quick guide on how to handle networking when you get too many inbound requests…

The Perils of “Busyness”…

I’m (still) embarrassed to admit this, but I had absolutely no clue what networking was until I was in graduate school.

In retrospect, that shouldn’t have been too surprising to me. As an undergrad I was an engineering major, a field in which I always stuck out a bit like a fish out of water.

One of the things that’s interesting about “engineer culture” is that it is one in which things like technical skill and your personal portfolio of work are prized far above all other qualities. There is a reason why engineering interviews focus heavily on things like technical case questions and a close look at your GitHub account. Engineers care first and foremost about what you can build. This is one reason why Engineering can be very meritocratic.

However, the focus on “what can you build” has a natural consequence of not caring as much about other things like “who do you know?”. Even though the art of networking (aka building relationships) can benefit anyone, its effect is muted in a “show me” culture like engineering. As a result, engineers tend to not talk as much about networking, at least not in the university I attended. I don’t know if I ever once heard a professor, career advisor, or fellow student talk about the need to network.

When I got to my MBA several years later, it was a total and complete 180-degree flip. Networking was everything. On the very first day of orientation the dean of the MBA program probably spent at least 20 minutes on the subject, pounding into our heads how the best jobs are found via relationships not job boards. All my classmates regularly talked about their networking plans, and some even had developed advanced strategies to help them network more effectively (one particularly ambitious classmate had even developed his own personal “CRM” tool they updated every week to keep track of all his conversations).

Unlike most of my peers, I had never heard of networking and eventually had to muster up the courage to ask a 2^nd-year student I respected if she would be willing to explain to me what networking even was and how to do it. I still remember her being surprised by the question but being kind enough to walk me through the basics.

The first years of networking were hard, but also really helpful. I quickly learned how valuable it was to simply have a large set of relationships with people I could go to for advice and occasionally help in finding a job. To this day I’m immensely grateful for those who were years ahead in their careers who took a few minutes out of their day to chat with a bumbling MBA student trying to figure out his own career path. Those conversations were invaluable for me in figuring out my “Point Z”.

But recently, I’ve run into a problem. I’m now ~10 years into my career and am getting more into my field. When I was younger I almost always took the time to say yes to a request from someone who wanted to network with me because I felt compelled to “pay it forward” (and I remembered clearly how scary it was to reach out to someone and ask for some of their time). I wanted (and still want) to give back.

But now? It’s a lot harder, especially since I regularly get more networking requests than I can take the time to respond to. I simply don’t have the time to do coffee chats like I used to. I have felt guilty about this but I also have to be realistic about the bandwidth I have. I don’t think I’m unique in this regard either. Many of my generation are reaching the point where we’re now the perfect networking targets for young students trying to get help (AKA we’re experienced enough to be useful, but not too senior to be completely intimidating to reach out to).

So what to do? How do you protect your time but also help someone else out? I’ve come up with a few things that I hope will be helpful to others:

How to Network When You’re Too Busy…

#1) Offer to help asynchronously

This is probably my favorite technique. Typically when someone reaches out to me asking to chat on a quick call I’ll just send by a quick response that looks like this:

“Hi [Name] – It’s great to meet you. Unfortunately, my schedule is pretty hectic right now due to some high priority projects at work. However, I’m happy to chat async. Please feel to send me over any questions you have via LinkedIn or email, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

This approach has the benefit of still being helpful, but allowing you to respond (briefly) at a time that’s convenient for you. You can turn a 30 minute coffee chat into a 30-second email or LinkedIn DM.

I’ve also noticed that it tends to weed people out who aren’t really serious about asking for your help. Oftentimes I won’t ever get a reply back (which of course saves time for both of us!)

I’ve also found that many of these asynchronous conversations can still be really useful, and allow me to develop real relationships with others. You’d be amazed at what you can learn from writing back and forth with someone. If I feel that someone has been very thoughtful in our async interactions I am much more likely to jump on a quick call if they ask again.

#2) Write online and just send links to your best thinking

This one has been an unexpected benefit of writing online.

When we started our Unwritten newsletter the original thought was to have a creative outlet for our thoughts and eventually write a book on the best business advice we were never taught formally in school. What I didn’t expect is that it would end up being an enormous time saver.

Now when people reach out to ask for my advice on XYZ, it often turns out that I have already written an article on XYZ and I can just send them a short note with a link to the article or essay.

I know writing online isn’t for everyone, but this is a real advantage of it. You’re going to get asked the same types of questions many, many times over, and it’s really nice to just have your thinking on those topics put together in a nice package you can send to someone. Then if they have follow up questions, you can just handle it async (see point #1 above).

#3) Ignore

This is increasingly (sadly) becoming more of a default for me. Oftentimes when I have a total stranger reach out I just have to ignore the message. It’s not because I don’t want to give back (I truly do), but I simply can’t allocate time anymore. Like a business that becomes saturated with demands, you have to start being selective with who you actually take the time to chat with. These days I basically only will jump on a call if someone is introduced to me directly by someone I know (and even though I will typically default to asking if they can chat async).

I imagine this is the strategy people who are very well known have to implement almost exclusively.

#4) Use a Virtual or Executive Assistant

I have never done this one personally, but I’m intrigued by the idea.

When I was a young college student I was trying to decide where to go get my MBA (BYU vs. Harvard vs. MIT). It was a decision I kept wrestling with over and over again, and I finally decided to do something brave and reach out to Clayton Christensen, one of my intellectual heroes and a professor at Harvard Business School. I sent a short email expressing my admiration for his writings and perspective on life decisions like this and asked if he had any guidance he could give me.

I never heard back from him directly, but 1 week later I got an email back from his secretary who told me that Clayton had gotten my email, was touched by it, and offered to put me in touch with some of his former students who had made similar decisions.

What struck me was that this entire conversation felt very genuine and personal but had clearly been handled almost entirely by Dr. Christensen’s executive assistant.

If you are in a position to hire an executive (or virtual) assistant who you trust to handle your correspondence, this could be an incredible time multiplier. The trick here is finding someone who will know how to communicate effectively on your behalf (in essence, communicating exactly as you would). There are an increasing number of platforms (see here and here) that offer these kinds of services and it’s becoming more affordable for the everyday person.

Again, this is an approach that I still haven’t tried personally, but likely will experiment with at some point.

Conclusion

The main point is this: you still need to find ways to be helpful without requiring the same amount of 1:1 time that you did when you were younger. You need to learn to scale in the same way you have learned to exponentially increase your impact in your job. That’s much easier said than done.

There are likely some other options for handling the sheer demand of inbound networking requests, but these have served me well so far. I can only imagine that the problem is truly thorny for the rich and famous who have to put severe boundaries around their time.

Thankfully that is not a problem I anticipate having to ever deal with at any point.

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