Best wishes.
Unless you say something weird or offer something really relevant in the email, i don’t think it matters. I usually wrote up my feedback from the interview shortly after doing it, and when i got thank you notes (always by email, snail mail would have been really strange) i would forward them to the HR rep running the process and then forget about them. I think about half of candidates sent me a thank you note. Your not sending one is completely normal, polite, and professional.
In a previous life I was sometimes part of the interview process for technical hires. I did not expect to receive content-free thank-you notes and don’t recall that I ever did, though I wasn’t usually the primary hiring manager.
I’m with those who say that if you have genuinely relevant information to add in followup to the interview, then in most cases go ahead and send it in an email, but unless it concerns some important relevant event that just happened, or some thoughtful post-interview observations, it may raise unwelcome questions about why you never mentioned it in the interview. And if sending such a message, by all means conclude it with a simple thank-you.
But I wouldn’t send a content-free “thank you for the interview” type message. They didn’t do you any special favours – they’re just conducting business. Such a message may be just one more unwelcome email in a busy manager’s inbox and IMHO risks being viewed as contrived and obsequious.
I took your comment to be about getting an interview. Obviously HR and the hiring managers can find people who have interviewed.
It has been three weeks and I have heard nothing.
My friend (who works there, but in a different department) knows one of the folks who interviewed me and asked the interviewer and got the impression that they have not made a decision yet (this was Jan 10)
I’m not sure asking my status would be useful, as if the reply was
For what it is worth the other applications are either no reply or not under consideration.
(two applications are “profile received” not even “under review”)
Brian
very frustrated
OP, sorry to hear about your job hunt. That sucks 
As a fellow dev, I’ve never seen the industry this rough. Hundreds of thousands of layoffs and not much recovery. AI is booming, sure, but traditional dev is dying.
I don’t think thank you letters or not make any difference right now. Every dev job is flooded with hundreds if not thousands of resumes within hours. You at least got interviews, but even then, the market is very much in the employers’ favor right now unless you are some hot new AI talent.
All that is to say… it might not be anything you’re doing. If you haven’t interviewed in 17 years, it’s a very different situation now. A lot of out of work youngins, compounded with not much investment in traditional software, plus hugely inflated salaries from the covid years, all means fewer positions to go around.
Ghosting is a sadly common thing now, from both employers and employees. If they don’t make you offer within a timely fashion, they’re just trying to find a better deal than you. They have many candidates to choose from. Some postings are fake for various reasons. Sometimes there is internal pressure to try to spend budget before the end of the year but then it gets vetoed by a higher up for whatever reason.
For what it’s with, one dev job took me 6 months to get hired. Others took usually 2 or 3 weeks. Fastest was 2 days. Far more never answered. Silence is the new normal All the old fashioned politeness went out the window in the last decade or so, especially after covid made and then burst a huge tech hiring bubble. It’s an oversaturated field now.
I’d keep applying and diversifying if I were you. But hopefully I’m wrong and they come through.
Luckily I’m doing OK financially. I did get my 34.5 week severance pay Jan 15, and will get my (pro-rated) bonus from 2024 later this year. My house is paid for, and I live in a (relatively) low cost area.
It took me almost a year to find a job last time, though remote work was not a thing back then.
I will not move – I would retire instead. I’m not keen on remote but have not ruled it out. Thing is, I have a LOT more competition in the remote workspace.
Brian
This may not apply for your situation, but the place it would make a difference for me is deciding when to apply to other jobs. One company I’ve dealt with was somewhat known for holding a grudge if you went through the interview process, they liked you, and you decided not to go there. So I wouldn’t want to start that process if I had something somewhat possible pending elsewhere.
Lacking that, yeah - it’s more curiosity than anything else.
… and a lot more opportunities as well … looking at far, far away states …
Well, I bit the bullet and sent an email to the HR person. There is a another Software Developer position open, so I used that as an excuse (not going to apply for new position if under consideration for old one)
Will update if I get a reply (I’m sure everyone is SUPER interested )
Brian
Counterpoint - I’ve gotten these kinds of followup emails that provided no content other than “hey, look at me, I’m enthusiastic!” and turned a mild “yes” into a mild “no”. I’m not HR but have sat interviews for positions, for context.
If you want to slip one in, make sure to include some question or some context that has actual value, not just an obvious excuse to connect in some way.
Some people don’t like having their time wasted, even the 5 seconds it would take to delete a content-less email. That is, unless you got a read that the interviewer likes such empty flattery. Then, by all means, stroke their ego. Just don’t follow guidelines blindly and expect the same result each time.
As someone who once used to do quite a bit of hiring when I ran a production graphics department, yes, definitely always send a thank you after an interview, and the sooner the better.
The production graphics dept I ran was basically cranking out reproduced graphics from established label and packaging designs, of which the original negs or plates to print from had been lost. There was little or no creative or design work involved. And when I’d interview, I’d get a lot of hotshot graphic designers who I could tell really wanted to work at a higher-end studio or ad agency. So when I had two equally qualified candidates, and only one sent a thank you, it was a no-brainer. I’d hire the person who showed me they really wanted the job.
Yes, I very much considered that an email would do harm. Right now I prefer rejection to limbo.
Alea iacta est
Brian
(the die has cast – too late to unsend)
just to show you How relative This is I am the other way round especially If It’s compatible with the job description eg sales
Yeah, there’s no hard and fast rule. If you can gauge the interviewer, do what that read tells you, but otherwise, it can be a crapshoot.
I don’t mind a ‘thank you for the interview’ if it’s mild and especially don’t mind if there’s some relevant followup questions. But the ones that express effusive, artificial seeming gratitude or enthusiasm for just sitting with them? Yeah, I don’t really want to work with somebody whose primary skill is brown-nosing. A simple thanks is fine. I don’t need the ego boost and perhaps I’m the sort that gets suspicious when somebody expressed enthusiasm when I haven’t really done anything to earn it.
I will say that older people will tend to expect or like thank you emails more than younger, so that might come into play as well. But it’s never an automatic ‘do this’ or ‘don’t do that’ situation.
No reply yet - I take that as a bad sign. I may or may not apply for the other position.
On the good news front I do have a phone interview scheduled for a different company.
(which came quite soon after application which is good)
Brian
54321
I usually just follow up with a “just following up to see if a decision had been reached, please let me know if you need any additional info.”
Personally, I don’t see a downside to aggressively (but politely) following up, so long as you aren’t obnoxious about it.
And really, do you want to work for someone who doesn’t have 5 seconds to figure out if he can bring on someone to help him out?
just 2 thoughts:
what percentage of HR or hiring-line-mgr. get swayed by those mails (oh, I am going to hire A instead of B, b/c of this mail?) … my gut feeling is very close to 0% … as in 0.00%)
does anybody “act” on those mails? … when I got them (in a hiring role), chances were high that I didn’t even remember who the person was … let alone a scenario where you interview dozen of people in dozen of different open positions …
So here’s the thing. I’ve done a lot of job searches during the course of my career. I’ve also been on the interviewing side a lot. In my experience, quite a bit actually (or at least they did up until my last job search 4 years ago).
A lot of jobs I landed (or nearly landed), I like to think part of it had to do with being able to quickly develop a rapport with the interviewers and/or hiring manager. In some cases, maybe those conversations didn’t land me that particular role, but they saw that I was a good better fit for a different role.
But also keep in mind that I might be just one of many interviewers and may not have ultimate hiring decision (which is frustrating when I say “no” and they hire them anyway and I see them fail in exactly the way I predicted they would).
Things might be a bit different in the past few years, with so much of recruiting becoming automated and operationalized. Before, companies seemed like they were ready to move quickly if they found someone who they connected with (in a few cases, I had an offer before I even got home from the interview). These days companies seem content to just keep cycling people through the Big Recruiting Machine looking for some “perfect candidate” because the process has become detached from the business who needs people.
Just finished phone interview with HR person – I think went OK. He specifically said to contact him if I don’t hear by the end of the week.
There were 300 applicants, but most were folks looking for remote work (and I am local - they definitely want someone local which is why I got a phone interview - HR guy is not even bothering with distant folks)
Brian