A phone number carries a small, honest paper trail before anyone hands you a resume. The area code alone can say where someone grew up, where they built their career, or where they still keep a foothold. Larry Chiang’s PQRST starts with Preview, and a phone number is one of the easiest previews available before a meeting even starts.
You are not profiling anyone, you are noticing a free signal that most people walk past without reading. A New York prefix on a contact who claims to be a lifelong Texan is not proof of anything, but it is a question worth asking. The same goes for someone who kept an old college-town number for twenty years after they left, that is loyalty or habit, and either one tells you something.
Larry’s approach treats these small facts the way a good editor treats a source: check it, do not assume it, then move on. External API thinking applies here too, a number tied to an old employer or program is a clue about what network someone is still plugged into.
None of this replaces a real conversation, it just gives you a better first question to ask in it. The video below walks through how small, overlooked details like this shape a first impression before a word is spoken.
Treat a phone number as one line in a biography you have not finished reading yet. The people who notice these details early tend to walk into the room already less surprised than everyone else.
Details: Watch Larry read the signals
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