Connections & networking
After a Networking Event: What to Write Down in the First Five Minutes
You met six people tonight. By the end of the week you may remember two, and not which one said what. Five minutes on the footpath, while it’s fresh, is the cheapest way to keep the rest.
Most networking advice is about the room: how to open, how to leave a conversation, what to say about yourself. Very little is about the five minutes after, which is when most of what you heard is still there to keep.
This is a short checklist for that moment. It works with a notes app, the back of a name tag or your phone’s voice recorder. Further down are three fictional notes from one evening, so you can see how little it takes.
Why the first five minutes
Forgetting is fastest early. In Hermann Ebbinghaus’s experiments in the 1880s, and in a careful replication in 2015, most of what was lost after a month had already gone within the first day, and a good share within the first hour (Murre and Dros, 2015). Both studies used one person learning lists of nonsense syllables, not names and faces at a noisy event, so take the shape of the curve rather than its numbers. There’s more on that in why we forget names.
The practical point is simple. On the walk to the car you still know that the woman in the green jacket was the one hiring. By the morning you’ll know you met someone who was hiring.
The checklist: what to write down for each person
- Their name, spelt the way they said it. If you weren’t sure how to say it, write that down too.
- The hook. How you’d describe them to a friend: “the bloke with the bakery who’s moving orders online.” This is what you’ll search for later when the name has gone.
- Where you met, and who introduced you. The event, and the person who brought you together, if anyone did.
- What they’re working on right now. Not their job title; the thing in progress. That’s what you’ll ask about next time.
- One thing to follow up. Either a promise (“I said I’d send her Tom’s portfolio”) or a question to ask next time (“whether he sorted the payments”). One is enough.
That’s about a sentence or two per person. If you only get one line down, make it the hook and the follow-up.
What to skip
| Write down | Skip |
|---|---|
| What they’re working on now | Their full title and company history; it’s on their LinkedIn |
| The one detail that made them memorable | Everything they said, word for word |
| What you promised, in their words or yours | A score for how useful they might be |
| Who introduced you | Anything told to you in confidence, or about their health, politics or money |
The last row matters. Write notes you’d be comfortable with them reading over your shoulder.
Three notes from one evening
Here’s a made-up Thursday night: a product meetup in a co-working space in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. Three conversations, three quick voice notes said into the phone on the walk to the bus, and what OldMate kept from each. Notice that none of them covers every line, and that’s fine.
Mei: the one who’s hiring
What you said
“Met Mei at the product meetup in the Valley. She runs the dog-walking app. She’s hiring a part-time designer. I said I’d send her Tom’s portfolio. Ask how the hiring goes.”
What OldMate kept
Mei
From your note
- Where
- At the product meetup in the Valley
- You promised
- Send her Tom’s portfolio
- Their news
- She runs the dog-walking app
- Their news
- She’s hiring a part-time designer
- To ask
- How the hiring goes
Daniel: the bakery
What you said
“Daniel, tall bloke in the Swans cap, Mei introduced us. He’s moving his bakery’s orders online and he’s stuck on payments. He said he’d bring sourdough to the next one. Ask whether he sorted the payments. See him at the next meetup.”
What OldMate kept
Daniel
From your note
- Daniel’s plan
- Bring sourdough to the next one
- Their news
- He’s moving his bakery’s orders online
- To ask
- Whether he sorted the payments
- Next time
- At the next meetup
Mei is named in Daniel’s note. When a note mentions someone else, OldMate offers them for you to review: link them to the page you already have, start a new one, or leave them out.
Grace: two minutes by the door
What you said
“Grace from the council’s small business team, only chatted for two minutes by the door. She runs the mentoring program. Probably see her at the November session.”
What OldMate kept
Grace
From your note
- Their news
- She runs the mentoring program
- Next time
- At the November session
Grace’s note has no promise and nothing to ask, and it doesn’t need one. Two minutes by the door is still worth a line, because in November you’ll walk in knowing her name and what she does.
Following up after a networking event
The note is for you. The follow-up is for them, and it’s smaller than people think:
- Keep the promises you made. If you said you’d send the portfolio, send it, with one line about why. That’s a follow-up with a reason.
- Mention the hook. “Good to meet you at the meetup. Hope the payments come together” tells them you were listening.
- Don’t pitch in the first message. Nobody remembers agreeing to a sales call over a sausage roll.
- Let some people just be people you met. Not everyone needs a message. A note means you’ll know who they are next time.
If sending that first message feels awkward, it may help to know that people often underestimate how much a new conversation partner liked them. Researchers found this “liking gap” between strangers in a lab, among first-year university students in their halls, and at a personal development workshop (Boothby and colleagues, 2018). It’s a tendency, not a guarantee about any one person.
Why bother with the people who aren’t useful yet
Because you can’t tell in advance who will matter. In Mark Granovetter’s 1973 study of people near Boston who found a job through someone they knew, only 16.7% saw that contact often; 55.6% saw them occasionally and 27.8% rarely (Granovetter, 1973). Acquaintances hear about things your close friends don’t. That was 54 people in one American suburb, and it says nothing about what any one conversation will lead to; your best mates won’t get you hired covers the larger studies since.
What a note does is smaller and more certain: when Grace or Daniel turns up again, you start from where you left off instead of from “Sorry, remind me…”.
Where OldMate fits
OldMate is a personal CRM built around that walk to the bus. Say or type a quick note, and who, where, what’s new and any promise fill in beside your words. Each person gets a page, and your promises wait in Follow-ups, grouped by person. It won’t message anyone for you; it’s there when you open it.
If you’re not sure you need an app for this, what a personal CRM is, and whether you need one is an honest place to start, and the personal CRM template works in a notes app. For clients rather than contacts from an event, see remembering client details.
Sources
Each source was last checked on .
- Murre, J. M. J. and Dros, J. (2015). Replication and analysis of Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0120644. One participant learning 70 lists of nonsense syllables, retested from 20 minutes to 31 days by the savings method, as Ebbinghaus did on himself. Neither study tested names or faces.
- Boothby, E. J., Cooney, G., Sandstrom, G. M. and Clark, M. S. (2018). The liking gap in conversations: Do people like us more than we think? Psychological Science, 29(11), 1742–1756. Strangers in a lab, first-year students over several months, and members of the public at a workshop; the gap is an average across people, not a promise about anyone.
- Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380. The job-change figures come from 54 professional, technical and managerial workers in a Boston suburb who found work through a contact. “Often” meant at least twice a week; “occasionally”, more than once a year; “rarely”, once a year or less.