Following up on a job is not easy especially when the person who has interviewed you is only friendly during the interview and plays hard to get a response out of once the interview has been completed. Job seekers and job providers are both familiar with this and have accepted it as the common norm of the working culture that you need to be discreet and not outspoken when it comes to taking interviews.
This practice can be both a burden and an opportunity as you may feel that lack of communication after talking is not the right approach. You must be fully informed or should be given words such as "We will let you know" by a particular date instead of saying that "Thanks for coming. We will get in touch". However, everyone does not do that and that’s why you need to how to follow up on a job.
#1. Ask For a Time, Politely and Directly
You need to ask it, and there cannot be any two ways about it as you need to plan your next interview and calculate which days you want to keep free so that you are always available for that unexpected call. A lot of interviewers are conscious of sharing this information as they don’t want to keep you in the dark and put faith in you that you can handle it in a mature way. You can ask them, will you be the one to inform me about the results or will it be the mailing team when the interview is over so that they answer your question and clarify all your doubts. It is the job of the person who is interviewing you to disclose the process around the result. So if you ask the head of operations the same thing chances are he or she will tell you to ask the HR, so keep that in mind. HR is the best person to ask this question to and if they are busy, then you can ask the next person available.
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#2. Avoid Obsessing Over the Result
After you have given the interview and reflected on how did it go overall, your mind can confuse you about the truth if you indulge in over thinking and make you focus on aspects which were not seen as bad by your interviewer triggering insecurity and panic inside you. When you obsess over the results, you constantly check your phone and email to see if there has been a notification or not. When it doesn’t come, you just cannot control yourself and start bombarding the person who can give you this information with incessant messages telling them that you are impatient and cannot wait for the response. What you need to do is divert your mind and distract yourself with something so that you are not constantly preoccupied with the result and are patient while it comes.
#3. Craft Consciously
Sometimes it happens that your interviewer tells you that you need to email them at a certain time on a certain day to learn about the results. You need to make sure that there is no spelling or grammar mistake in your follow-up mail as it can create a bad impression on the professional who is reading it and make them reevaluate their assessment of you. Attention to detail is one of the most admired skills that employees can have and when you craft your emails consciously it shows that you really care about the professional impression you make.
#4. Thank Them
No matter how the interview went, you need to send your interviewer a thank you message immediately after you have left the office premises. This tells them you are grateful for the opportunity and it will help you when the interviewer goes through all the resumes and applications to pick the ones as when he will recall you, your follow up enthusiasm will strike them along with the passion you displayed during the interview. It will be a testament to your diligence when you include your full name, phone number, mailing address and email address on the message. You can even make sure that this email doesn’t go to their spam folder by writing “Job interview follow up space your name" to the email address or mobile phone of your interviewer.
#5. Practice a Pre-Call Dialogue
When you have not heard from them even after they promised you that they will call you by this date, you need to take the matter into your own hands. You have waited for long and even if they are in a position of power they have no right to ignore you. However, the thing could be that they have forgotten about you or have you on standby which means if the candidate they have selected turns down the job offer you will be the next person they approach. You need to rehearse all the scenarios your mind can come up with and choose a response wisely. Scenarios can range from one where the HR tells you that they are still waiting on the word from the operations to which you can reply "Ok, sure. Please let me know the status". You can even be surprised to hear that you have been selected and they were just about to call you to inform the same and upon hearing it you can express delight and enthusiasm for making it to the organization and reply you can’t wait to work.
#6. Make The Call
You need to make the call and ask them directly whether you made it or not as you cannot let this thought play forever on your mind which demands you to know the result when there has been no clear communication. When we don’t do a thing we have thought of doing for a while, we tend to shrink from it and eventually make it more than what it is so you need to make the call and take matters into your own hands. Be polite. Make sure you wait for 3-4 days if they have not given you a timeline for the results before making the call.
Tell us how you follow up on a job. Let us know your thoughts and opinions through the comment section below. We look forward to your replies.
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