A founder messages you on a Tuesday: "Fancy a coffee next week? Nothing formal, just a quick chat." It sounds like the opposite of an interview, and that is exactly the problem. An informal interview coffee chat is an assessment with the structure taken out, and the people who do well in it are the ones who treat it as round one.
Why employers ask for a chat instead of an interview
There are four common reasons, and it is worth guessing which one applies to you before you turn up.
- Testing interest before a role exists. A manager expects a budget to land or a team member to leave. They want to know who is out there before anyone writes a job description.
- No formal process to offer. A firm of fifteen people has no HR department and no interview panel. The coffee is the process, or at least the first half of it.
- Sounding out a passive candidate. You have a job and you are not looking. Inviting you to an interview would presume too much, so a coffee lets both sides act as if nothing is happening yet.
- Checking fit before spending a panel's time. Larger employers do this too. One person meets you for forty minutes so that four people do not lose an afternoon.
None of these is casual from their side of the table. Someone gave up an hour for you and will walk away with an opinion, passed on to a co-founder or a director in two sentences.
If the person inviting you could hire you, or could influence someone who can, this informal chat before interview rounds begin is already an interview. The cup in your hand changes nothing.
What gets assessed when there is no agenda
A structured interview has a scorecard. A chat has an impression, which is harder to manage because you cannot see what is being scored. In practice it comes down to four things.
How you talk about your current work
This is the most revealing part, and most people do not notice it is happening. "So how are things at your place?" is a friendly opener and also a test of judgement. Someone who describes their employer fairly, frustrations included, sounds like a person who will one day describe you fairly too. Someone who unloads sounds like a risk.
Curiosity
Do you ask things, or do you wait to be asked? Over coffee, your questions are half the conversation. A candidate who asks nothing in forty minutes reads as uninterested, and that rarely earns a second meeting.
Whether you have thought about their business
Not whether you have memorised the About page. Whether you have an actual view: who their customers probably are, what looks hard about what they do, where someone like you would fit. You can be wrong. Being wrong and specific is better than being vague and polite.
Ease in conversation
Small employers in particular are asking a blunt question: could we sit next to this person every day? Listening counts as much as talking here. So does being able to let a silence sit for two seconds without filling it.
How to prepare for something with no question list
You cannot rehearse answers to questions nobody has written. You can decide what you want to leave behind.
- Three things you want them to remember. Write them down the night before. For example: you have run a team through a system migration, you know their sector from the customer side, and you could start after a normal notice period.
- Two stories. One about something that went well, and one about something that went badly and what you did next. Keep them short, with a number or a concrete result in each. Stories are the only thing that survives a casual conversation; adjectives do not.
- Real questions about the business. "What does the next twelve months look like for the team?" "What is taking more of your time than it should?" "What made you get in touch now?" That last one often tells you which of the four reasons you are dealing with.
- A one-minute account of what you do. Not your job title. What you are responsible for, for whom, and what has changed because of you. Say it out loud once before you go, because the first version is always too long.
Conduct on the day
Who pays. They invited you, so they usually pay, and you say thank you once. If you arrive first, buy your own drink and do not bring it up later. Offering to pay is fine, insisting is awkward. Nobody has lost a job over a flat white.
Punctuality. Five minutes early, not twenty. Arriving first lets you choose a table away from the grinder, which matters when you are trying to hear each other.
Dress. One notch below what you would wear to an interview at that company. If the interview would mean a suit, wear a jacket without a tie. If it would mean a shirt, a clean jumper is fine.
The CV. Do not slide a printed CV across a cafe table unless they asked for one. It changes the temperature of the meeting and puts them in the position of reading in front of you. Have it ready to send from your phone that afternoon instead. If yours is out of date, a tool like Postulit can build a clean one from your LinkedIn profile in a few minutes.
Notes. A small notebook is fine and a laptop is not. Write down names, dates and anything you promised to send. Ask before you write if the subject is sensitive.
The virtual coffee
The remote version follows the same logic with less margin for error. A "virtual coffee" on a video call is usually shorter, around twenty to thirty minutes, and there is no walk to the counter to cover a slow start. Test the camera and sound beforehand. Sit somewhere plain, look at the lens when you speak, and yes, an actual cup on the desk helps you look less like a defendant. Keep your three points on a note next to the screen, not on it.
The trap of relaxing too far
The setting lowers your guard, sometimes deliberately and often not. Twenty minutes in, you like the person, and the questions get friendlier. "What is your boss like?" "Is it true they lost that big contract?" "What are they paying you over there?"
Answer the first with something fair and brief. On the second, anything confidential stays confidential, and saying so plainly does you credit: "I can't really talk about clients, but I can tell you what I worked on." A person who hands over their current employer's secrets over a coffee will do the same with the next employer's, and the listener knows it.
Salary deserves a pause. You are not obliged to state your current pay in a chat about a job that may not exist yet. A workable reply is that you would want to understand the role first, and that you are happy to talk about ranges once there is one. If they push and you choose to answer, give a range you would accept, not a confession.
Asking what happens next, and the message afterwards
Do not leave without knowing where you stand, and do not turn the last five minutes into a formal close either. One light question does it: "I have enjoyed this. What would a next step look like from your side?" Or, if no role has been mentioned: "Is this something you are thinking of hiring for, or is it still early?"
Then write within a day. Three or four sentences: thank them for the time, pick up one specific thing from the conversation, attach the CV if they showed interest, and repeat the next step you agreed. Keep it as informal as the meeting was. A full interview-style thank-you letter after a coffee is out of tune.
The takeaway
Next time someone suggests "a coffee, nothing formal", accept warmly and prepare for an hour as you would for an interview: three points, two stories, a handful of real questions and your one-minute account. Be on time, stay discreet about your employer, ask what comes next, and send a short note before the following evening. Treat it as a chat and you will be pleasant company. Treat it as a first round and you may get a second.