Soliciting opinions on sending the interviewer a “thank you” of some kind after being interviewed . . .
Never a bad idea I’m sure, but is it mandatory? Does not sending a th/y hurt someone’s chances of getting the job, and if so, is that true of most or all companies in general, or is this etiquette specific to particular industries?
Is email sufficient or must pen & ink and/or the post office be involved? Does the type of position matter i.e. does a more tech-heavy job opening mean that a handwritten note might seem old-fashioned and work against you?
Curious what people’s views are & how much they might vary across ages, type of company etc.
tip-tapping away by phone, but why would you care?
It probably depends a bit on the industry. In my hiring and experience in SW engineering in Silicon Valley, not sending a thank you is not a strike against the applicant. Double negative, yeah, so IOW a thank you is not required.
When I was hiring, I sometimes received a thank-you note. I interpreted it as “the candidate didn’t hate us”.
Last year, when I was an interviewee, I did e-mail a brief thank-you to my interviewers after my first interview. (I didn’t really have the guys’ e-mails or last names, so it took a little bit of detective work.) I was invited to a second interview, and hired. I think it’s mostly because I was a good fit with the right kind of experience.
But a few weeks ago, my boss (different, older guy) mentioned to me that an interviewee had just sent him a thank-you, and that he found that to be a sign of interest. For him to mention it, I guess most people don’t send one.
Conclusion: it doesn’t seem to hurt, but you can get hired without it.
Since retiring, I’ve had 4 different temp or permanent jobs. I never sent any thank-you notes and I was hired every time. Maybe if I’d been seeking a management position, it might have mattered, but I’m so low on the food chain…
It’s not mandatory, but most people don’t do it, so it helps to reinforce your name with the recruiters. And pen-and-ink is better than email, because everybody gets tons of email and therefore don’t notice it as much as they do regular mail.
Every little bit helps. “We got three possibles, what’s her name, what’s his name, and purplehorseshoe. Who should we hire - one of those we don’t particularly remember, or the one who followed up?”
The decline in formal etiquette gives power to those who still use it. Exceeding the standard is always a good thing, even in little ways.
It’s one of those nice little things that makes you stand out from the crowd. It shows the potential employer that you are thoughtful enough to do it and that if you’re invested enough in the interview process, you’re more likely to be invested in doing your job effectively. Really just comes down to etiquette. Certainly not required in any industry I’ve ever dealt in though. Not sure I would send a thank you after an interview at McDonalds or Taco Bell though. They might think of that as being overqualified!!!
As a business owner, my experience has been that a thank you note is rare, and makes zero impression. I interview five potential employees and receive one note. I never remember who that one was.
My previous boss used to throw them out like any other junk mail he’d receive. If he wanted you, he’d hire you, and a note wasn’t going to have any bearing on his decision.
I have mentioned before that it isn’t a thing in Australia. I have done lots of interviewing over the last twenty odd years and have never received one. I think I would find it creepy if it ever happened. Mind you plenty of people express the sentiment at interview.
IMHO, having been on both sides of the hiring process many times, it’s not mandatory. From an interviewer’s perspective, I’ve largely made my decision by the time you’ve returned home and sent the thank you.
OTOH, every job I’ve ever got, I’ve pestered the company over a period of months. Unless I hear an official “no”, I typically check back every couple of weeks to let them know I’m interested. Kind of like the axiom that it takes ten “touches” to make a sale. Now I don’t know if it actually matters. Then again, it may be the difference between the firm saying “where are we going to get someone to work on that project” and “oh yeah…that guy who keeps calling would be a good fit for this!”. So in that sense, the “thank you” is an unobtrusive way to make one of those ten sales touches.
It might raise a red flag that you’re not comfortable with technology or, even worse, that you’re an anti-technology hipster that will be a pain in the ass. ‘I’m not on Facebook’ is the new ‘I don’t own a television’
Depending on the size of the company, it is likely the incoming postal mail is screened. Receiving the handwritten thank you note 5 days later, perhaps scanned and forwarded, isn’t really a good impression. Of course, this will be different at a small start up or mom and pop type of business.
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I always felt the standard “Thank you for your time” that I gave at the end of the interview was sufficient… until recently.
My most recent interview was a video conference, with technical difficulties worked through on both ends to make it happen. The interview went well once we got the tech sorted out, but I felt it didn’t end well when they found out I wouldn’t be available for an in-person interview until November. So I sent a “thank you” email the next day to keep my name fresh in their minds, and to remind them that I’m highly interested (understatement of the year…) in the position. In November, we’ll see if it worked.
It certainly doesn’t help, so long as it is short and not smarmy. But it was never a part of the decision. I polled the interviewers the day of the interview and so we had a decision long before anyone could send an email, unless they did it from their car.
But in Silicon Valley good people go fast, so we didn’t wait around for weeks to interview everyone before deciding.
As for interest, I could usually tell by the last interview (which I did) if the person was interested or not. But I’d never not give an offer due to a presumed lack of interest, unless it was pretty obvious.
These days a thank you Email seems to be the expected and normal thing. A handwritten note gets there too late to matter in these times. I would find a snail-mail thank you note very odd in fact. I’m in tech and if I thought about it at all, I would consider it a minor negative.
In the end I don’t think the thank you is really of much importance but when I interview I alway try to send an email thank you at least as you never know if it is expected and really cannot hurt.
I don’t want one, and I don’t want to send them. When I get them, it’s one more thing to delete and the few newtons of energy spent pressing that button is not worth any value received. A positive hiring decision by me will in no way ever turn on a thank you note. I pretty much ignore them without reading, but if I do and there are grammatical errors then that’s a potential negative.
I have sent a few because recruiters asked me to. Bleh.
It’s ridiculous that job candidates have to guess about these things. Should I send a thank you note? Can I have a two-page resume or is that too long?
There should be published standards for all this stuff.
For the job that I have now, I sent thank-you emails to everyone on my interview panel. Later, I learned from my boss that I had impressed them with this act since the interview had been conducted over the phone. So not only did it show my attention to detail (jotting everyone’s names down as they were introduced), but that I knew how to track down people’s email addresses. Didn’t seem like a big feat at the time, but now I understand that these are skills not everyone has.
However, I don’t think the thank-you’s helped me get the job since such “extras” can’t be considered in hiring where I work.