Interview Thank You Letter

[Quercus]

@KneadToKnow

I have an interview on Monday, and I was planning to send my thank-yous via strippergram (male or female as appropriate to the recipient).

Too much?

I’m not sure.

I think it kind of depends on what position you’re applying for (In-your-face cutting edge marketer? Personal Assistant for wealthy single male? Rap Video director? Stripper? )

[SaharaTea]

I’m with Hedda Rosa - I would send an email. It’s certainly an acceptable format these days. And I don’t know what kind of job you’re applying for, but I work as a paralegal and I’ve seen attorneys let snail mail pile up in their mailboxes for days on end, especially if it’s not something essential. Their blackberries, on the other hand, are practically glued to their foreheads.

Keep it short and polite. Don’t stress out about it too much. Ultimately it’s the strength of your qualifications and your interview that will get you the job, not the thank you letter.

[Brown_Eyed_Girl]

@aktep

In the 12 years I’ve worked in my current department, we have had exactly one applicant send thank you letters to the individuals who interviewed him. Almost everyone who received the letter found it very off-putting (just the act of there being a letter, no one had comments on the contents of the letter), and, as he was an on-the-bubble candidate anyway, the letter eliminated him from consideration.

@Hedda_Rosa

Send a thank you email, not snail-mail letter. Letter takes too long, but an email can arrive the same day. I think the thank you email is a requirement. I’ve absolutely tossed a borderline resume because their lack of email thank you was the proverbial straw.

Moral of the story: make sure your interviewer loves you or hates you. Either way, a thank you note/letter/email probably won’t make a bit of difference.

@msmith537

At worst we will snicker a bit because “thank you” notes sort of make the candidate look like an over-eager college grad applying for their first job.

It’s easy to snicker when you have a job. However, you might keep in mind that in the current job market, it’s not just college grads that may be “over-eager” to land a job.

[Hedda_Rosa]

@kaylasdad99

Waitaminute, email is more of a social norm than snail mail for a thank-you note? :eek:

Holy fuck.

Western civilization is over. Somebody turn out the lights.

Yep. In the 3 days it takes for your thank you note to get to me I could make the final decision and offer to someone who emailed her thank you. And no, I’m not gonna twiddle my thumbs for 3 days before making the offer just in case someone decided to snail mail me a thank you.

[KneadToKnow]

@don_t_ask

Anyhow even too many strippers would be better than a thank you note.

I’ll have to see what my budget can bear.

@Quercus

I think it kind of depends on what position you’re applying for (In-your-face cutting edge marketer? Personal Assistant for wealthy single male? Rap Video director? Stripper? )

Um, library cataloger, actually.

[Voyager]

@msmith537

I think the OP was talking about an email.

And has anyone here actually worked for an HR department or as a hiring manager and “tossed a resume” because they sent a thank you?

Here’s the deal with the interview process at any company I’ve been at. The interview team has decided on you by the end of the day, and often right after your interview ended. So by the time you send your thank you, it’s probably too late to matter anyway.

Same here. I’d say about half the candidates send me a thank you (I am usually the interview organizer) but it makes no difference.
There is only one case where it might help - if you think of something in your background which would be useful to the company and which didn’t come out. This is from the perspective of how the candidate can help the company, not blowing his or her own horn. Never seen one of these.

It’s much mroe effective to wait a week or so and send a follow up email to see what the status is. Contrary to popular belief, the hiring process at most companies is hardly a well oiled precision machine. And HR often has little input in the actual decision making process.

For us HR can never say yes but they can say no by enforcing arcane rules. A follow up is good because with the present work overload those not getting a job may or may not hear.

For me, we have a hard enough time finding good candidates for our very specialized openings that I know if I’m going to start an offer by the end of the day, and often before, and sometimes spend my last interview slot selling the candidate.

Oh, and for our jobs anyone sending a snail mail thank you must have wandered in from the wrong century. It is not likely to help.

[Quartz]

A follow-up by letter or email is good practice here in the U.K. It’s considered polite, and while the previous comments about immediate decisions are true, you never know if their first choice will reject the offer and then you want them to turn to you.

[kaylasdad99]

@Hedda_Rosa

Yep. In the 3 days it takes for your thank you note to get to me I could make the final decision and offer to someone who emailed her thank you. And no, I’m not gonna twiddle my thumbs for 3 days before making the offer just in case someone decided to snail mail me a thank you.

Well, since the last thing the interviewer has always asked me is “Do you have any questions?” and one of my stock answer-questions is “What kind of a time-frame are you expecting for the final hiring decision?”, I suppose I could see my way clear to not bothering with a snail-mail if I know they’ll be making a job offer the following morning.

Can’t remember the last time I interviewed for anything where the expectation was to hire that quickly, though.

I’m terribly happy, though, that my current job is safe, because I never want to be I the position of looking for work again.

And I will never accept the premise that an email is ever going to be an actual socially-expected thing.

[Bosstone]

@kaylasdad99

And I will never accept the premise that an email is ever going to be an actual socially-expected thing.

A letter seems incredibly old-fashioned and would actually concern me that maybe the candidate was not technologically savvy. When I was hired for my job, my boss primarily looked for people with specific education. Eventually I had to convince him that who he needed to hire were people who were comfortable with computers. I can teach the job, but I can’t even get started on that if the new hire doesn’t know how to use Office or isn’t comfortable with email in general.