Email Your Interviewer

noreply@blogger.com (Ask a Manager) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:07:00 +0000

Interviewed for a job and then never heard back? No rejection, no anything? Let your interviewer know how rude that is — without burning any bridges.

You put hours into preparing for the interview. Maybe you buy a new suit. Maybe you drive several hours to get there, spending gas money you don't really have or taking a vacation day to do it. Then you sweat it out through the interview itself. They tell you that they'll notify you of their decision in a week. And then ... nothing. It's like you don't exist to them.

This behavior is inexcusable -- it's callous, dismissive, and rude. It's just not that hard to send a quick email, even a form letter, letting candidates know they're no longer under consideration.

Employers owe interviewees a response, period.

To make matters worse, sane job seekers aren't going to call employers on their rude behavior, lest they burn bridges. So employers get to act like this with impunity, and the rare person who does complain is generally dismissed as naive or crazy, simply because no one else does it.

No longer.

Now here, presented to you by Ask a Manager: a service that job seekers can use to generate an anonymous letter to the employer, telling them how rude their silence is.

How it works:

First, read the instructions to the right. Then, using the form below, submit the email address of the employer who never responded to you. They'll get a polite letter explaining why their silence is rude. The letter will be from this site; the employer will not know that you are the sender.

Here's the letter that will get sent anonymously:

Hi,

A job candidate you recently interviewed asked to have this letter sent on his/her behalf and is utilizing this anonymous message service because he/she knows that writing personally would burn bridges.

The candidate never received a response from you about the outcome of his/her candidacy.

As you probably know, most job candidates put significant time and effort into preparing for a job interview: Many spend hours reading up on your company and industry and thinking about how they could best offer something of value to you. They may take a day off work and spend time and money traveling to you. And then they wait ... and wait and wait, anxiously hoping for an answer, any answer.

A quick email or form letter letting the candidate know he or she is no longer under consideration -- that's all it takes. Candidates deserve that. And so does your organization, which looks unprofessional when you leave candidates hanging.

On behalf of your past and future candidates, won't you please reconsider your practices?

Sincerely,
A Fellow Hiring Manager
www.emailyourinterviewer.com

Disclaimer: emailyourinterviewer.com does not investigate the claims made by candidates using this service, and your email will not be stored.

Ready to take action?

how to follow up after your interview

noreply@blogger.com (Ask a Manager) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 23:09:00 +0000

If you haven't followed up after your interview, you should. Here's how to follow up well:

* Send a thank-you note immediately. E-mail is fine for this and has the advantage of arriving faster, but handwritten notes are still appreciated (and are increasingly unusual so will stand out). And if there are multiple interviews, send a thank-you note each time.

* Find out their timeline. Hopefully, you asked about their timeline in the interview itself, but if you didn't, follow up within a week to reinforce your interest and politely ask what they expect their timeline for a decision to be.

* Be enthusiastic—but not desperate. Most commonly, job seekers are too worried about looking desperate. It doesn't look desperate to express your interest in the job or check in to ask about the timeline. However, enthusiasm does cross the line if you are calling more than once a week, calling earlier than the date they said they'd get back to you, sounding like you're eager to take any job as opposed to this one in particular, or appearing as if this is the only option you have. (And if you do truly feel desperate, ask yourself what a candidate who felt confident about having sufficient options but was particularly interested in this position would do—and do that.)

* Don't be alarmed if you don't hear from them immediately. The hiring process often takes longer than a candidate would like, for all sorts of reasons—the decision makers are out of town, scheduling conflicts have delayed a final interview, or the company bureaucracy that is required to finalize an offer takes time to work through (not necessarily a great sign about the work environment, but that's a different topic), and so forth. Nerve-wracking, yes, but don't read too much into it.

* When you don't hear back after they said you would, politely follow up, explain you're very interested but understand that hiring can take time, and ask if they have an updated timeline. It's completely legitimate to ask this; employers assume you have other balls in the air and need to be able to plan.

If you've gone through all the steps above and still haven't heard anything, then you're being treated rudely. (But not until then.)

At this point, be more explicit, saying something like, "Would you let me know when you expect to be making decisions? I'm extremely interested in the position, but I'm talking with other companies as well, and hope to get a better sense of your timeline." If you don't hear anything back after that, mentally move on—that's really all you can do. If they resurface in a month with an offer, you'll have to evaluate at that point whether it's even a company you want to work for. And if they don't—well, perhaps bullet dodged.

Thanks for visiting!

noreply@blogger.com (Ask a Manager) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:12:00 +0000

Thanks for visiting Email Your Interviewer.

Note: Because emails are sent manually, your email may not be received immediately. They're sent roughly once a week. Please don't worry that the system isn't working if you send one to yourself and don't receive it immediately -- you'll receive it soon!

For many more resources on job-searching, please visit Ask a Manager, where you'll find seemingly unlimited opinions and Q&As from a hiring manager.