Part 11: Following Up The Interview

Patricia Kitchen | Change@work

December 7, 2003

Part 11 of a weekly series helping people with job searches.

So, your job interview is over and you feel you can kick back and wait for a response. But don't get too comfy. As welcome as it may be, there can be no passive time in a job search.

You can choose between two levels of follow-up. The first is the most basic and often is ignored by most of your competition, especially entry-level types: Send a thank-you note. That's not only the polite thing to do, but it also sends a message to the potential employer that you are clued in to how the system works.

Still, no more than 5 percent of applicants ever sent Julio Meneses a thank-you note when he was hiring security guards for major hotels in Manhattan. "It's not very common," says Meneses, 38, who is now pursuing a programming degree part-time at LaGuardia Community College and working as an assistant in a Manhattan editing company.

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Yet, "it makes the decision easier," he says, if you have two candidates who are neck and neck. Send it within three days of the interview, and his preference is for a paper version, not e-mail, though experts say that depends on the culture of the industry.

The second level of follow-up is the letter of influence. And for that, let's back up to the interview itself. To prepare, it's important to ask some questions that may produce answers you'll not like hearing, says Kate Wendleton, president of the Five O'Clock Club, a career coaching organization based in Manhattan.

To the degree you can, you'll want to find out a little about your competition -- what does the boss think they have going for them that you don't? Is there anything about you that gives the boss pause? If you can at least get a hint of that, you may not leave the interview "dumb and happy," says Wendleton, but you will be armed with a sense of the potential objections you may overcome through intelligent follow-up.

You're told you have less experience than the other candidates for a public relations assistant job? Counter that, she says, by taking the "consultative approach." Instead of taking the attitude, "Trust me and hire me -- then I'll show you what I can do," take some initiative, do some quick research based on needs you heard in the interview, and send a follow-up letter that says something like, "I've come up with six ideas on where you could get coverage for the XYZ account. I know you're interested in radio more than print, so... "

A letter like that "has meat to it," says Wendleton, and it's a perfect opportunity to ask for another meeting where you can discuss your ideas further. It doesn't matter if they are winners. What matters, she says, is that "it shows you're thinking and taking initiative."

Of course, such a letter is also just the place to address that question you feel you flubbed in the interview itself, as in, "To expand on our discussion of the time I had to deliver bad news to a boss, I wanted to add ... "

When it comes to making follow-up phone calls, both managers and career counselors agree that it's a waste to call to say, "Have you made a decision yet?" That's especially true if the interviewer said, "Don't call us, we'll call you."

But calling or e-mailing with an idea to share, a relevant article to point out, an upcoming meeting the hiring manager might not know about -- that's a different matter. Think of it as "giving little gifts back," says Judy Rosemarin, president of Sense-Able Strategies, a career management and coaching firm based in Manhattan.

What's more, these can be passed on through the boss' assistant, that gatekeeper who can be incredibly powerful, hopefully as your advocate.

If the process is being dragged out, you might also call the hiring manager and ask if, as he or she is seeing more candidates, the job description is changing and if you are still in the mix, says Wendleton. And then follow up accordingly.

After all this work, the job may still go to someone else. But you know what? You are still wise to follow up again. Send a note saying you would have loved to work there and still hope to one day in some capacity, assuming that is true. And in a month or two send along another idea or two, just to show you are keeping that boss in mind.

Because you never know. The person they ended up hiring may not have worked out, making you a shoo-in.