Networking events have a hidden clock. You have ninety seconds to introduce yourself, find common ground, exchange contacts, and walk away - without being remembered as the awkward one. Practice that exact ninety seconds. Voice-to-voice with AI roleplay, free.
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'I'm a software engineer at a fintech company.' Forgettable. 'I help small businesses see their cash flow before it surprises them.' Memorable. We push you to find the version of your pitch that makes the listener want to ask one more question.
Anyone can ask 'what do you do?'. Few people ask 'what's the hardest part of your work right now?' or 'what's a problem you keep coming back to?'. Networking mode trains the questions that actually start real conversations - and gives you the ones to expect from sharp counterparts.
How do you leave a conversation politely when you want to talk to someone else? How do you set up the LinkedIn message you'll send tomorrow? How do you decline a pitch without being rude? Real networking is half the conversation and half the choreography around it. We practice both.
Networking events run on a strange social contract. Everyone there is a stranger. Everyone there is hoping to find one or two people worth keeping in touch with. Everyone is on a clock - the event ends in ninety minutes, the open bar closes in thirty, the panel discussion you actually came for starts in ten. The conversations that work are the ones that figure out fast whether two people are useful to each other, exchange enough information to follow up later, and end gracefully.
The English skill that makes this work isn't the same as conversational fluency. You can be perfectly fluent in casual conversation and still bomb at networking - because networking requires you to communicate value about yourself in compressed time, ask questions that surface useful information, and read social signals (interest, disinterest, time pressure) without any of it being said out loud.
fluentwith's Networking mode runs you through realistic walk-up exchanges. The AI plays a working professional at a meetup or conference. You walked up. The AI is curious but not impressed by default - they want to know what you do, what you're working on, what's hard about it, and whether you'd be useful to know. Your job is to introduce yourself in a way that earns a follow-up question, find genuine common ground or a useful difference, and either propose a follow-up or graciously close.
The post-session report focuses on the things networking specifically rewards: clarity of pitch (could you explain what you do in twelve words?), specificity of questions (did you ask anything that wasn't on autopilot?), pacing (did you take up the right amount of airtime?), and the practical-information exchange (did you actually trade contact info or set up a follow-up?). Generic 'fluency' isn't enough - networking has its own ruler.
Many users report a specific transformation: their first session feels stiff and over-rehearsed. Their tenth session feels like an actual conversation. Somewhere in between, they stopped trying to deliver pre-formed sentences and started actually listening to the AI's responses. That shift - from rehearsing to responding - is what real networking sounds like. The drills are designed to push you across that line faster than dozens of awkward in-person events would.
If you have a specific event coming up, give the AI context. 'I'm going to a Series-A fintech meetup in two weeks, my pitch needs to land for VCs and founders.' The conversations adapt to the audience. The vocabulary, the pacing, the questions you'll get asked - all calibrated to what you actually need next.
Three components, in order: a noun phrase that says what you do (specific, not 'software engineer' but 'work on real-time fraud detection'), a one-sentence why-it's-interesting hook, and a question that turns it back to them. Total time: under twenty seconds. We practice this exact pattern until it's automatic.
Casual is no-agenda conversation - small talk, weekend stories, whatever. Networking has a job: figure out fast whether two people should follow up. Different vocabulary (specifics over generalities), different question types (probing vs friendly), different pacing (compressed). Both are voice-to-voice; you'd use them at different moments.
Replace 'what do you do?' with 'what's the hardest part of your work right now?' or 'what's a problem you keep coming back to?'. Replace 'where are you based?' with 'what brought you to this event?'. Specific questions surface real answers. We drill this in every session.
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Yes. Most networking-mode scenarios are set at tech meetups or conferences because that's where the vocabulary is specific and the patterns are tight. If your industry is different (finance, design, academia), mention it in your responses and the AI will calibrate.
Three patterns work: (1) 'I'd love to continue this - mind if I send you a message tomorrow?' followed by exchanging info; (2) 'I want to be respectful of your time, I'll let you mingle - really nice meeting you'; (3) 'I see [person] over there I wanted to catch - we should definitely connect though'. We practice all three until they sound natural.
Yes. The thing introverts hate about networking isn't usually the talking - it's the unpredictability. Practicing the patterns (intros, follow-ups, exits) reduces the unpredictability dramatically. By the third session, the script feels less like 'a thing I have to perform' and more like 'a tool I can use'.