I applied for a company through a contact who works for the company. He said everything looks great and he transfered my application to HR and added that we should wait to see what they will say.
One day after this, the head of software development (the big boss) in that same company sends a contact request to me on LinkedIn. I am very excited and of course, I accept it. However, there are no messages attached, nothing.
Now it has been 3 weeks since my application and I haven’t heard anything from the company. The big boss is still on my contacts list and hasn’t said a word.
Do you think it’s a good idea to send him a message like “I am very interested to have an opportunity to talk to you. Is there anything else I can do to make the application process faster?”. Or do you think sending him a message at this point is a good idea at all?
He reached out to you to connect; I don’t see any reason why it would be a breach of etiquette to reach back out to him and affirm your interest in the position. Indeed, it is likely to be seen as a good thing.
My impression: he added you as a contact because this gave him full access to your profile. So I guess it means he is (or was) interested at looking at it, which is good.
It depends on how much of a “big boss” he is: is he 30 years old with 5 underlings, or 50 years old with 75 minions on 3 levels? In the first case, I guess it doesn’t hurt to contact him directly; in the second case, I’d try to contact HR instead (through LinkedIn, or there’s usually a HR e-mail on the company Web site).
The part about “speeding up the process” may be a bit too much. You should just ask if the position in question is still open and if they need any additional information.
I’d advise keeping the tone of the message pretty formal and typo-free, just in case.
@Heracles, my profile is already public and everything is visible even before adding as a contact so I am assuming his intentions were different. First time, I assumed that he added me because he wanted to keep in touch in case the response from HR is positive and he wanted to show that they are also serious about recruiting me.
But in the end, I don’t think he is testing to see if I will contact him or not to see if I am passionate enough about the job, no? It would be playing games, which is not a senior engineer would do, I guess. I’ve seen such gameplay in dating scene but business is kind of different. (I hope. :))
I’ve seen way to many games played by senior engineers. Some engineers become senior because they are good. Others get there because they are good at games.
Not saying that’s happening in your case, but I wouldn’t rule it out purely on that point.
I’ll point out the obvious. It’s Christmas time and the end of the year. There’s a lot of other stuff going on in people’s lives, many people are taking vacation, etc. I wouldn’t read much into the lack of contact yet. I also wouldn’t try contacting him before the new year, or you’ll just get lost before he get’s back to you. Wait until the 3rd, at least.