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How to strike up a conversation with doctors/lawyers/engineers?

post #1 of 56
11/9/09 at 12:47am
Thread Starter 
I was reading a book on networking that said that in for each profession, there's a list of common questions people in a profession throw at each other to get to know each other in social settings and appear knowledgeable. For example since I'm an accountant, I know people usually ask "Do you work in public practice or in industry?" "What firm are you with?" etc, and usually if they answer public practice, they proceed to share a gripe about the hours. Any such tips on chatting with doctors, lawyers, and engineers?
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post #2 of 56
11/9/09 at 12:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FidelCashflow View Post
I was reading a book on networking that said that in for each profession, there's a list of common questions people in a profession throw at each other to get to know each other in social settings and appear knowledgeable.

For example since I'm an accountant, I know people usually ask "Do you work in public practice or in industry?" "What firm are you with?" etc, and usually if they answer public practice, they proceed to share a gripe about the hours.

Any such tips on chatting with doctors, lawyers, and engineers?

What's wrong with just asking them what kind of <profession> they are and going from there?
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post #3 of 56
11/9/09 at 12:54am
To an engineer: "You sir look like a fashionable man who keeps up with the current trends. Could I interest you in a bespoke pocket protector?"
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post #4 of 56
11/9/09 at 1:03am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tor View Post
What's wrong with just asking them what kind of <profession> they are and going from there?
There's nothing necessarily wrong with it, but the wrong questions will just label you "clueless outsider" as opposed to someone more astute that they'd want to talk more with. Going back to the accounting example, if someone responds to me saying "I'm an accountant" by saying "Wow... you must be good at math" in my head, I'll just think to myself "ughh... this is going nowhere." You ask the wrong questions... you look silly and ill-informed. If you ask the right questions, you look like an astute insider. Everyone would rather talk to the astute insider than a clueless outsider.
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post #5 of 56
11/9/09 at 1:04am
Asking what firm you're with for lawyers is basically immediately steering the conversation towards professional stratification. X firm is better than Y firm, or X firm landed a deal, or Z firm lost one of their big commercial litigation guys, etc etc etc... I would steer clear of that altogether and just talk about the news or sports. You're not allowed to talk about files in-depth anyway. You could talk about the area in which they practice, but if they're on the corporate side don't expect that to be terribly interesting to an outsider. Hell, even if they're not, do you really care about recent developments in search & seizure? Few do... I couldn't interest the honeys with that ish, and I know's it.
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post #6 of 56
11/9/09 at 1:26am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FidelCashflow View Post
There's nothing necessarily wrong with it, but the wrong questions will just label you "clueless outsider" as opposed to someone more astute that they'd want to talk more with. Going back to the accounting example, if someone responds to me saying "I'm an accountant" by saying "Wow... you must be good at math" in my head, I'll just think to myself "ughh... this is going nowhere."

You ask the wrong questions... you look silly and ill-informed. If you ask the right questions, you look like an astute insider. Everyone would rather talk to the astute insider than a clueless outsider.

Well it's slightly unreasonable for any lawyer, doctor, engineer, or otherwise rather specialized professional to expect every person with whom they converse, interesting and worth talking to or not, to be an "astute insider". There's such thing as being an astute outsider, wherein you can ask questions that aren't pitifully stupid (e.g. wow, how good at math are you?) without knowing all about the ins and outs of an orthopedic surgeon's occupation.

That's what I'm saying.
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post #7 of 56
11/9/09 at 1:30am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tor View Post
There's such thing as being an astute outsider, wherein you can ask questions that aren't pitifully stupid (e.g. wow, how good at math are you?) without knowing all about the ins and outs of an orthopedic surgeon's occupation.

Sounds like we're saying the same thing... I just want to know what questions to ask and what questions to avoid sounding pitifully stupid. Sometimes I'll walk into a room full of engineers or doctors, and I'd just like to have one or two opening lines in my back pocket if everyone else is talking shop and I'm lost for words.
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post #8 of 56
11/9/09 at 1:53am
Doctors - what type of medicine/field are you in? Lawyers - what type of law do you practice? Engineers - what type of engineering are you in? When they answer, ask them a question about their specific field. Ex: Doctor - I'm in plastic surgery you - interesting. I just read a piece that said plastic surgery is up due to people wanting to look better for job interviews. then just take that and run with it.
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post #9 of 56
11/9/09 at 2:23am
As an engineer, I always ask what discipline a fellow engineer practices (usually I have an inkling though). The follow up is then one of an infinite number that depends on my familiarity with the field. There's no way I could relate all of that to you, nor a way in which I could expect to have that information for all but a very limited number of fields. As a law student, it seems the de rigeur icebreaker question for other law students is "what was your undergrad?" but I suppose that would hardly be as appropriate for working attorneys. One useful thing though: different fields tend to label their sub-specialties differently, and knowing that particular term will at least prevent you from coming off a total outsider. I'd never ask an engineer what type of engineering he does, I'd ask in which discipline he practices. In law I think it is more like 'area of practice,' in medicine it's 'specialty.' ~ H
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post #10 of 56
11/9/09 at 2:24am
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post #11 of 56
11/9/09 at 3:42am
Engineering, best to steer clear from talking about work as much as possible for fear of boring everyone within a 10m radius. If you want to get them animated, ask about their favourite brewery.
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post #12 of 56
11/9/09 at 5:39pm
As an engineering student, I wish you luck striking up and maintaining a decent conversation with an engineer.
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post #13 of 56
11/9/09 at 5:43pm
I think you should employ the tactics recommended by the serious playas in the various "how do I talk to a girl?" threads.
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post #14 of 56
11/9/09 at 5:55pm
Engineer: A train leaves Chicago travelling east at 85mph, bound for Buffalo. Simultaneously, in Buffalo, a circle begins to be circumscribed around a square with sides of 224 pixels on a 386-generation PC in Adobe Photoshop 1.3 running on Windows 3.11. There is an engineer on the train, and another in the computer lab in Buffalo. Will either get laid before you realize I am making fun of you? Doctor: So, seen any nice tits lately? (If it's a female doc ask her how big the biggest cock she's ever seen on an operating table was). Lawyer: You're probably best not making fun of the lawyer.
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post #15 of 56
11/9/09 at 5:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eccentric View Post
As an engineering student, I wish you luck striking up and maintaining a decent conversation with an engineer.

+ trillions
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