The developers I most want to hire are never on the job boards. They’re heads-down building something, reasonably content where they are, and rightly suspicious of recruiter messages. Since moving into engineering management this year, the tool I’ve come to rely on for meeting them is embarrassingly simple: a coffee.
A coffee chat is 30–45 minutes, informal, at a café or over a video call. No whiteboard, no panel, no trick questions. I talk about what we’re building and why, they talk about what they’re working on and what they’d want next, and both of us leave knowing whether a deeper conversation makes sense. Hiring is a matching problem more than a selection problem, and this is the fastest way I know to trade the information that matching actually needs.
Why I bother#
I’ve stopped thinking of these chats as recruiting. They’re just conversations, and every so often one turns into a hire — sometimes eighteen months later, when the person’s circumstances change. The pipelines that reliably produce good hires are built out of relationships like that, not out of job ads.
They also fix the job-description problem. JDs are generic by necessity. Over coffee, a candidate can ask the questions that actually matter to them: what does success look like in the first six months, who would I be working with, what’s the hairiest technical problem on the team right now. People who hear honest answers to those questions self-select well.
And a chat shows your culture instead of describing it. Whether you turn up prepared, curious, and respectful of someone’s time says more than any careers page. It runs both ways, too — how someone behaves in a relaxed conversation tells you more about working with them than a rehearsed interview ever will.
The moments where a coffee chat earns its keep: approaching someone who isn’t looking, warming up a referral before anything formal, and talking with someone weighing a career shift — IC to management, startup to enterprise, or the reverse. In a tight talent market, that covers most of the people you want.
How I run one#
The first message decides everything. Generic outreach gets deleted. Do your homework and be honest about your intentions:
“Hi Sarah, I noticed your talk on distributed systems at QCon and your blog posts on event sourcing. We’re tackling similar challenges at [Company] as we scale our payment infrastructure. Would you be open to a 30-minute coffee chat? No interview agenda—just curious to hear your perspective and share what we’re working on.”
That works because it’s specific, upfront, and offers something (a conversation about interesting problems) rather than only asking for time. Then make it easy: offer a few time options, pick a spot convenient for them or a video tool that doesn’t need a download, and send a proper calendar invite so nobody’s guessing.
The chat itself only needs a loose shape. A few minutes of real small talk and why you reached out. Then their story — current work, what they enjoy, what frustrates them, what they’d want in the next thing — where your job is mostly to listen. Then yours: the mission, the team’s actual challenges, hard parts included, because candidates respect transparency and can smell a sales pitch. The most valuable stretch is the open one near the end: what would need to be true for them to consider a move? Close with explicit next steps, even if the next step is just “let’s stay in touch”.
Follow up within 24 hours with a short note that references something specific, and deliver anything you promised — an intro, a link, whatever. The boring aftermath is the real culture demo.
If you do this more than occasionally, keep a simple spreadsheet of who you’ve talked to and check in every so often, even with no role open. And it needn’t be a manager-only activity — some of the best chats happen when your engineers grab coffee with impressive people in their own networks. That’s where good referrals come from.
Questions that earn their slot#
Ones I ask:
- “What’s been the most interesting problem you’ve worked on recently?”
- “What would you want to be different in your next role?”
- “What’s your learning style? How do you like to grow professionally?”
- “What questions do you have that would help you evaluate whether this could be a fit?”
Ones I’d ask if I were on the other side of the table:
- “What’s the biggest challenge the team is facing right now?”
- “How do you measure success for this role?”
- “What does the path to promotion look like?”
- “Why did you join the company? What’s kept you here?”
- “What’s something about working here that might surprise me?”
If you’re the one invited#
Most people who look up what a coffee chat is are on the other side of the table from me: someone has asked them for one, and they want to know what they’re walking into. Here’s what I’d tell you from the side that sends the invitations.
It isn’t an interview. Nobody is scoring you and there’s no test, so you don’t need to prepare answers. It is still a first impression, though, so treat it like meeting a future colleague rather than a friend of a friend. The difference from an interview is that you’re allowed to be curious, and you’re expected to ask as much as you answer.
Wear what you’d wear to work there on an ordinary day. If you don’t know, smart casual is never wrong. On a video call, have the camera on and find a quiet room; that matters more than the shirt.
Preparation takes about half an hour. Read what the company makes and anything the person has written or built. Have a two-minute version of what you work on now and what you’d want next, because that question is coming. Bring two or three of your own questions; the list above is a fair start.
As for what to talk about: your work, what you enjoy about it, what you’re curious about in theirs. Leave salary for later unless they raise it. It’s perfectly fine to ask whether there’s a role in mind and what the process would look like if there were.
Whoever did the inviting usually pays. Offer, but don’t make a thing of it. Send a short thank-you within a day that mentions something you actually talked about, and you’ve done more than most.
And if you want one yourself, ask. Keep the message short, say why that person, and make it easy to say yes: “I’ve been following your team’s work on the new search, and I’m thinking about moving into platform engineering. Would you have 30 minutes for a coffee or a call in the next few weeks? Happy to work around you.” Most people say yes to a request that specific.
Ways to ruin it#
The fastest is turning it into a stealth interview. Start quizzing someone on technical skills or sliding in behavioural questions and you’ve broken the implicit deal — save that for the formal process. Over-selling is a close second: the hires that stick are the people who joined with clear eyes about the hard parts. Turning up unprepared, or going silent afterwards, does quieter damage; every chat shapes what that person tells their network about you.
From my side of the table, the warning signs are a candidate with no curiosity about anything, a conversation that feels purely transactional, or someone who describes every past employer with the same bitterness. Candidates should keep their own list: a rep who can’t explain why the work matters, evasive answers about turnover or direction, and anyone more interested in selling you than understanding you.
Not every chat leads anywhere, and that’s fine — most don’t. The point is that the next time you need to fill a critical role, you’re not starting from a blank job ad. You’re starting from a stack of real conversations. Reach out with an invitation to coffee, not a job description.
Further Reading#
Related Articles on This Site:
- Using the STAR Method for Developer Interviews - for when the chat turns into a formal interview process
- Three Things I’m Focusing on as a New Engineering Manager - what makes teams work, which is what you’re matching for
- Why You Should Intern at a Startup - useful context when chatting with someone weighing a startup move
External Resources:
- First Round Review: Hiring Engineers - startup hiring guides from experienced operators
- Lara Hogan’s “Questions for Our First 1:1” - written for 1:1s, works brilliantly over coffee
- Patrick McKenzie on Salary Negotiation - worth reading to understand the candidate’s side of the table
- Who: The A Method for Hiring - Geoff Smart and Randy Street’s framework for systematic hiring
- Harvard Business Review: Hiring and Recruitment - research-backed pieces on talent acquisition