When I was doing sales in Japan, I went through thousands of them. Now I’m teaching English in Taiwan I don’t need them.
They are so engrained in Japanese culture that people will have personal ones with just their name and contact info on them.
I always had business cards when I was in business. Now that I’m retired, I’m thinking about having some new ones printed up.
Ukulele Ike, Esq.
Tuba Player
Book Reader
Heavy Drinker — Gin and Whiskey a Specialty
My partner is a barber/hairdresser, and he goes through a few dozen a week.
I’m an information security analyst, and don’t have any actual work need for cards, but I print up a handful when going to trade shows, but even that need is dwindling. A couple of years ago, vendors had fishbowls for prize drawings, but at the last show I went to, all of the raffles were driven by scanning your badge, so I didn’t use any of my cards.
No disrespect intended (and I mean that sincerely, not snarkily), but when I receive business cards with scratch-outs and handwritten info, it does NOT come off as “more personable.” It comes off as unprofessional.
I think one of the following: either the person’s employer is so short on cash that they can’t afford to update employee’s business cards; or the employee simply can’t be bothered to update their cards (but thinks it is a good use of their time to individually scratch out and write in the correct info every time they hand out a card). Either way, it’s not a great first impression to give. I’m also usually annoyed when I get business cards like this, because more often than not, the handwriting of people who do this is illegible to boot.
A few weeks ago I got a business card from a consultant with a scratched-out email address. The email address he hand-wrote above it didn’t work, either. :rolleyes:
On another occasion I remember getting a business card from a guy I interviewed with who had a typographical error in the email address listed on his business card. :rolleyes: This made it pretty frustrating trying to send a thank-you email after the interview.
My son went through a similar issue when he was interviewing for jobs this last spring. At some of the places he interviewed at, every interviewer gave him a business card. At other places, he was lucky to get one card. Candidates are always advised to send thank-you emails after interviewing, but this is a frustrating exercise if you don’t get any business cards.
For those of you who are retired: Both my husband and I had jobs where cards were used quite a bit. After we retired, we moved to a town where we didn’t know anyone. I made cards for us when we started getting to know people in our new town, as it made it a lot easier to give them e-mail etc. I made one set of cards with just my name, address, phone and e-mail, another set with same for DH, and one set that had both our names and info. We used a lot of them at first and I still use two or three every few months. You can get “blanks” from Avery for your printer and make nice looking cards for cheap.
I use an app that scans business cards and adds them to my contacts. When I was dealing with my mother’s broken pelvis and my dad’s Alzheimer’s and trying to dying living accommodations for them back in December, our was a life saver. I talked to dozens of people and being able to add them with a quick camera snap tho muy contacts helped me keep my sanity.
This would be a definite asset if I had a work mobile phone. But I don’t and I’m not about to clutter up my personal phone with business card info.
I’m a buyer and I meet salesmen. I have cards and hand them out on request frequently. I take those proffered and put them in a notebook filled with plastic sheet protectors designed to hold business cards. These are divided by business type. When they get full or I have some down time, I winnow out the useless ones. In my profession, I do need cards and I do need to accept them.
One thing to know is that if you do make cards, people who scan them into their phones appreciate normal ordinary print. If you choose some elegant or elvish font,it’s gong to come out gibberish.
Ditto for me. In my previous job, a few years ago, a U.S. customs officer at the airport had asked me for a business card to confirm that I was working for a Canadian company. So, in my current job, when it became clear that I would need to travel once in a while, I asked my boss for business cards, just in case. He looked at me funny, as he himself doesn’t have any, but he ordered me a box of 500… and I’ve hardly used them at all. Certainly not at customs.
At conferences we print attendee badges with QR codes, and supply exhibitors with readers so that they can be scanned. They can still take regular business cards, but having a database of prospects generated is much more efficient.
I’m retired, but 20 years ago when I was running around giving talks for sales support I used a lot of them. I used very little when I shifted to internal work.
Pre-smartphone I had a case for the business cards I received which came in handy lots of times.
In Japan, I learned when I gave technical talks there, you give the card using both hands, card oriented to be readable by the recipient, and bow. I’m sure I did it all wrong, but they were nice.
I always used to, but when we moved offices two years ago and got our stationery reprinted, we just never bothered to get business cards.
I’m still rather surprised when I get handed one. They are such a rarity in these days LinkedIn days.
I attend a few scientific conferences each year, and regularly exchange printed business cards with colleagues. I don’t have time to write down or type in people’s names and contact details at the event itself; if I strike up a conversation with someone, it’s usually during a coffee break, and we will need to hurriedly run to the next session before long. I put all the business cards in my wallet and then at the end of the day, or at the end of the conference, I’ll enter them into my computer’s address book, along with notes about what we discussed.
I agree that printing QR codes on the cards would save time with the data entry. A QR code ought to be able to store enough to fit one’s contact details in a standardized format such as vCard.
I have a box of business cards (hundreds? Thousands? Bazillions?) with fifty or so missing. I never have one on me, though.
I printed up a batch several years ago. Still have most of them. But they’re no good as I don’t have my “professional” email address anymore.
On a few of them, for fun, I printed a suitable 3-D single image random stereogram that I had made on the back. Surprised, right?
I would like to warn people that scanning random QR codes is a dangerous activity. You need to be very sure that a QR code on a business card is from a completely trustworthy source.
(In other words, I would never, ever do this.)
I have cards, which I use when meeting with salespeople. We exchange cards, and after they leave, I toss theirs in the trash. No idea what they do with mine.
I have them. I use them when I go to business conferences.
Never had any in my entire career. Some professors had some printed at their own expense, but I never did. People familiar with my work knew how to contact me and that was enough. If they didn’t know my work, a card would not make them interested.
Opening a QR code is about as dangerous as opening a URI that you received by e-mail in a web browser. Which is to say, it’s not completely safe, but the technical and social strategies for mitigating this danger are almost the same in both scenarios. If the software people are using to open QR codes fails to implement these technical safeties, then the problem here is poorly designed software, and we should warn people against using that software, not against using QR codes generally.
Besides overinflating and misplacing many of the dangers, the article you linked to contains at least one fundamental inaccuracy. Namely, not all QR codes (and not even all malicious QR codes) contain “a link to a website”.
I have a box of 1000 cards sitting in my desk drawer right now. In 10 years I’ve given out maybe a half a dozen. I’m generally the person contacting people in my work, so really I need everyone else’s card, and no one really needs mine. At least they were cheap!
My main worry isn’t that I won’t know how to contact the people I meet, since these days almost everyone I need to deal with has their contact information on the Web, where it is easily Googleable. My main worry is that, after meeting dozens of people at an event, I will forget their names and the fact that I was planning to contact them again. Exchange of business cards is a quick way of helping me to remember who I need to get in touch with after the event.
(There are some exceptions, though—I have occasionally received business cards from famous people. These cards include contact details that are not publically available, and so it’s good that I get their direct phone numbers/e-mail addresses rather than having to go through their office staff.)
I actually do for the side business I do repairing computers.