I can’t seriously imagine an HR person even in a small company wanting morepaper or emails coming into the office.
I’d seriously call BS on this.
Any company that would expect this kind of bullshit and is passing on the best qualified applicants in the name of thinning the pool is a company that I would not want to work for.
Yes, I would expect politeness and courtesy from applicants, but sending two three-paragraph thank you notes when companies can’t even be arsed to tell you they’ve hired someone else? Bullshit. I didn’t get a thank you note when I took time off work for five multi-hour interviews for one company, only to be told that I couldn’t be hired because they would always take internal applicants first. Thanks, assholes, that would have been nice to know.
She.
I think it’s a supply/demand thing. The fewer jobs there are, the more hoops an applicant has to jump through. Some of those hoops are damned arbitrary too.
One of the local school districts has a great reputation as a place to work. A couple of years ago, when they had 500 teacher openings for the next school year, 8000 people applied. They required an online “personality” test to determine your “temperament”, and they used it to eliminate 85% of the applicants.
As a matter of principle, I never have (and never will) write a “thank you note” to an interviewer or HR personnel. Unless I really enjoyed the interview, for some reason.
Or unless you let me interview for a job that pays a million a year and keeps me in hookers and blow year-round, possibly.
I hardly believe it’s a serious test of writing skills. People who can’t write get someone else (me) to write their resumes and cover letters. I’m sure they’ll find someone to write their thank-you notes too.
Perhaps I just live in an alternate universe or something, but ever since I interviewed for and got my first job in 1984, I have written thank you notes to the person who interviewed me for each and every interview I’ve ever been on. I wouldn’t NOT write one. It is simply what one did and still does (at least in my “circles”).
Maybe I’m just very old fashioned (but I would certainly do it again if I were in a situation now where I was interviewing.)
I’ve never written a thank you note for a job interview and had no idea that it was expected, of course I haven’t interviewed for a job in 20 years or so.
And since I do occasionally give interviews, I’ve never gotten a thank you note either.
If I ever wrote a thank-you note to HR, it would be for staying out of the way. I’ve worked in technical and specialized fields, about which HR is invariably clueless, and found them to be mostly a hindrance on either the hiring or the get-hired end. I love it when they make me fill out generic job applications listing my high school address and GPA, just so they can have their papers in order.
I wonder what kind of heart attack I’d give them listing my GPA as 93?
(My school didn’t use GPAs).
People tend to interview with 6 or more people when they interview here - though we do a lot of our interviewing on campus which is a different procedure. For those who come into the office, I would say most write some form of thankyou note. Some address them directly to the individuals, but others will send one to HR thanking the individuals as a group.
I wouldn’t disqualify anyone because they didn’t send a thankyou note, but it is certainly pleasant to receive one. After all, I spend half an hour of my day interviewing the person and not billing, and try to give them as much information about the firm as possible/answer any questions that they might have.
It is a different type of interview here though, I suppose - we recruit on an annual basis out of law schools (ignoring the laterals) for a specific summer program. It’s not just we have a vacancy, let’s try to fill it.
And, gonzomax, 10 years ago in my (fortunately) short stint as a recruiter, I told everyone to write these letters, and thought it was pretty commonplace then.
Well said.
We missed the boat. Back in the day, they were “personnel” and did nothing more than push paperwork. Now it’s a bunch on unskilled pains in the ass who are on power trips. Giving unqualified people the license to create policy is probably the worst thing about today’s corporate job.
Robot Arm
I’m not seeing the outrage here. Let’s see:
This means 75% of HR managers do not have any expectation that a thank you will be sent. This seems to me to be about right; I always send a thank you for an interview, but from being on the other side of the desk, I know the practice is not uniform, nor do I as an interviewer expect it. It’s a little tick in your favor if you send one, a +1, but it’s not anything against you if you don’t. (But the “+1” is why I send them.)
Here’s the thing: If you asked me about thank-you’s in a survey soliciting my opinion, I would actually give you my opinion. If you asked if I preferred the note to be typed or hand-written, I personally would say “typed” because I consider that more professional. I guess that would put me in the 21% who want a typed hard copy, but it hardly makes me a demanding hard-ass: You ASKED me what I would prefer to see. If we got down to the details of what it should look like, I might say “Huh. Never thought about it, but I guess it should thank the company for the opportunity to interview; briefly restate your qualifications; and reiterate your interest in the job.” Again, how does that make me some OMG HR Nazi who is all about the ass-kissing?
If you ask someone to participate in a survey, they will answer the questions you ask. Considering that only 25% of the respondents give a shit about thank-you’s anyway, it’s hardly a shocking revelation to find that the 25% who do care about them have preferences as to what they’d like to see.
I send thank-you’s. I send one per interview, addressing it to the senior person interviewing me and asking him or her to convey my thanks to the other people who interviewed me as well, naming them by name. I never send them to HR; what for? “Thanks for the parking pass?” “Thanks for scheduling my interview?” But IME thank-you’s rarely hurt but they might help a wee bit, and it’s the wee bits that may make the difference at the end of the day. As an interviewer, I don’t care if people DON’T send thank-you’s, since the practice is hardly universal, but if you DO send one then I have the same expectation that it will be polished and professional that I have for the rest of your application materials. If I were asked about my preferences in a survey, I’d say what they were. Not sure where the outrage is about that.
Looking for a job out of graduate school, my school’s career services center recommended sending thank-you notes to those who interviewed you. “It might help (a little); it is very unlikely to hurt; either way it’s polite,” sums up the reasoning they offered.
This is hardly “new.” If anything, I suspect that it’s a dying trend, rather than a growing one.
I know it sounds like a PITA and I also thought it was stupid.
However, when I was a hiring manager I noticed how few people did it and that it really did have an effect on me. If someone wasn’t nearly as qualified as other applicants, it wasn’t going to get them an offer. However, if they were close it might.
The other thing I was queasy on was calling and seeing where the hiring process was at. I used to think it was ‘bothering’ the person. However, as a hiring manager that, and thank you notes, really do come off as ‘professional’.
So, I say do it. Thank you notes and phone calls.
Also, hurdles are your friend. Every hurdle they put up means some people won’t do it.
Likewise. I figure that 99% of the time it can’t hurt. If someone is so curmudgeonly that they would be put off by a professional thank you note, I wouldn’t want to work for them.
You’re in HR huh? Dealing with HR is the biggest waste of time I’ve ever had interviewing for any type of engineering position. Who the fuck cares what course of study I took in high school when I have actually been working in software engineering and information technology for seven years?
Get real.
No kidding. I can tell when I’m dealing with an HR drone who has no clue about anything when they ask for things like 10 years experience with Windows Server 2003. They sit there reading buzzwords they don’t understand, and preventing me from actually talking to the people who can determine if I have the skills or who might have the skills I need. Then after all the technical guys have asked all the technical questions, they want the generic job application (often AFTER the offer letter is signed and returned) just so they can have it ‘for the file.’
It’s stupid paperwork-shuffling pencil-pushing bullshit.
Now I’m being told that I have to give up an entire billable day so that I can get HR training in ‘career management’. Trust me, HR, if my career here isn’t managing to be rewarding, I will go find one somewhere else.
A lot of people just hate HR. I didn’t go through HR to get this job. The first person I talked to was already an engineer here, and the two guys who interviewed me scheduled it themselves. I never spoke to an HR person until after I got the offer, and that was a complete waste of time (please fill out this employment application including the names of your high school teachers), and since I’ve worked here all they’ve done is take time that I could’ve been using to do actual work and make me watch stupid videos about how to be politically correct.
I work with software engineers. We are disgusting, offensive freaks who hide in our little cubicle farm far far away from corporate and leave everyone alone. HR, please stay away.
Thanks- I thought I might be missing something. I agree that a letter specifying why an applicant was rejected is a bit much to ask, and a potential liability for the company, but a note to say “search is over, you didn’t get it” is polite. Professionalism should go both ways.
Here’s the real issue: Any prospective employer who has expectations regarding a candidate should make them explicit up front: We expect you to wear a suit and tie when you come to visit us and we expect you to follow up with a thank you note.
What’s wrong with that? As Jodi said, it’s not a very high percentage.
Further, there’s nothing saying that they won’t consider applicants who don’t do this. I hire people occasionally. I expect them to do some of this. It’s a point in their favor if they do. I won’t disqualify someone just because they don’t, but I will notice.
Everyone is reading this to say that HR will keep you from getting the job if you don’t send a thank you note, but that’s not what it says at all.