This Wednesday, February 16th at 8 pm EST, there is a Speed Networking event called Network Roulette for Young Professionals Seeking Mentorship sponsored by Brazen Careerist.

The purpose of the event is to introduce career and life coaches to young professionals who want to find a mentor or coach to work with on advancing their career.

Brazen Careerist’s Ultimate Guide to Finding the Perfect Career Coach provides the list of coaches for the event and a little bit about their philosophy on coaching.

Some of you may remember with fondness or disdain the speed dating rage that took place about 10+ years ago. The design of speed networking is very similar with some major differences.

  • You have a limited amount of time to make a decision. Speed dating gave you ten minutes, now you only have three minutes to decide if you want to talk to someone further.
  • This event is being done online. You will not see the other person.
  • If you do not feel a connection with the other person, you can roll the dice and move on to the next person.

Whether you are the coach or young professional, preparing your three minute conversation will be critical to making quick connections.

Avoid the small talk. This is not the time to ask “how are you doing tonight” as an introduction. Everyone is doing this event for one reason – to find who to connect without side of the event and to see if you can help one another.

Refine your 30 second elevator speech. It is essential that you introduction describe what you do and what makes you different from others. If you can do it in less than 30 seconds, it leaves more time for your questions.

Limit what you want to communicate and accomplish to one or two things. Three minutes goes by very quickly. Boil down your wish list of items to the one or two that are most important to you.

Develop your screening questions carefully. Regardless if you are a coach or a young professional, your questions will distinguish you from the other participants.

As a young professional who is looking for a mentor or coach, what are the key characteristics you want in the relationship? How can you determine if the other person possesses them? These are the questions you should be asking prospective coaches.

Similarly, it is important for coaches to know how to qualify someone quickly. Is the person looking for mentor or coach? Is he or she ready to make the investment in coaching? Does the young professional know what they want out of a coaching relationship?

Who knows, maybe we will be matched up during the Network Roulette! You can sign up for it here.