Ask HN: Interview Thank You Emails. Necessary?
I have been told by an older business man that it is 100% necessary to send an email to anybody you interview with thanking them for their time and to point out one or two things they said that you were really interested in.
To me personally, this feels like it comes across as annoying and is actually a detriment. I am under the impression that the computer science world cares much less about corporate bs and can actually harm you.
I do not know anybody who hires computer scientists, so I wanted your opinions on the importance of these follow up thank you emails.
PS: I am about to graduate from college.
35 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 96.4 ms ] threadThat said, I remember all three.
I take it a step further. I always send a hand written Thank You Note by snail mail. Always. I have never failed to do this.
Why? Because if someone has spent an hour of their time (I don't care if it's on company time) to potentially change my life, the least I could do is take 5 minutes to share a sincere Thank You. I always take the time to hand write it, I always make it personal, and I am always sincere. (If you're going to be even 1% phony, don't bother, people will see right through it).
There are some nice byproducts. It demonstrates professional courtesy. It demonstrates good communication skills. It demonstrates good customer service. It gets you remembered. Every time.
But I don't do it for these reasons. I do it because it's the right thing to do. It is never "annoying" or a "detriment". Almost everyone I have ever sent a hand written note has told me that they really appreciated opening it and reading it.
Sometimes I even take it a step further. Several times, I have asked public speakers what their favorite restaurant is, and then sent a gift card in the Thank You note. I really want them to understand what a difference their contribution has made in at least one attendee's life. The gift card is a nice idea because I know they will use it and enjoy it, and maybe even think of me that night. I would never send a gift to an interviewer - that's not the same thing.
> if someone has spent an hour of their time (I don't care if it's on company time) to potentially change my life, the least I could do is take 5 minutes to share a sincere Thank You.
That implies that choosing a slower method of communicating somehow shows greater thanks than would, say, an email or phone call. I suppose to some people (certainly not me), a snail mail letter may seem more personal or professional than an email, but I don't think the mere fact that your message arrives via snail mail vs. email would reliably earn you points with those in charge of hiring.
Here's two tips to help you:
(Note: I've never worn a suit to an interview, but still always try to dress nicely even if I know the company is a shorts/sandals/t-shirt kind of place. In those instances a nice pair of jeans and an ironed shirt usually work.)If you're being interviewed by a formal suit, though, don't go busting out the tux :-p. That's the top level.
When all the people you have interviewed send you a thank you note because it's "the thing to do," then it is hard to gauge the level of sincerity.
For me, the enthusiasm and energy demonstrated at the actual interview is far more indicative of whether either party really actually appreciated spending time together.
a) A startup or a mid-sized company will usually act pretty fast in making an offer or informing the candidate they're declined. The bureaucracy at bigger companies may mean it could be awhile before you hear back from them even if they liked you, but for the most part I felt silly sending thank-you letters after my employment at the company was already determined.
b) It's common to go on an interview loop and meet 4-8 people. I found myself basically copy-pasting them same letter to everyone I had met and I felt really foolish. The alternative was to think of something unique to everyone, but this felt equally contrived ("I really enjoyed those questions about how Perl handles multiple inheritance!")
c) Business cards are pretty passe now and a lot of engineers don't get them at companies because they don't need them. So I would ask the employees I would interview for their cards, they wouldn't have any, so I had to awkwardly quickly jot down their full name and e-mail address while the next interviewer was already walking into the room. Or sometimes I would forget to ask, and then I'd e-mail the HR contact, and I doubt it ever got to the interviewer.
d) When I got older, I quickly realized I never made any difference to me as a hiring manager. If I liked a candidate, I hired him. If I didn't, I didn't hire him. If I received a thank-you e-mail, it didn't make a lick of a difference. I know it can demonstrate good communication skills, etc, but I already made my judgment on the candidate's communication skills in the 1 hour I spoke to him, not in the 15 seconds I took to read his thank-you e-mail.
e) At a company I interviewed at, I once sent everyone a thank-you e-mail, and then I was hired. Somehow my personal e-mail address was made the default in everyone's Outlook address book for my name, and it was literally weeks until it was fixed. Until then I had to keep checking my personal e-mail as well as my work e-mail. This is obviously more a failure of Outlook or that company's IT department, but that was basically the last time I ever sent thank-you e-mails.
Look, it won't hurt. If you're paranoid and getting a lot of 'old-school' advice, then go ahead and do it. But seriously, at no point does a candidate's offer status hang in the balance on his thank-you note. An interview debrief never ends with, "well, sounds like we could really go either way on this guy... let's see if he's the kind of polite young chap that sends a thank-you e-mail."
So good luck with the interviewing, and if you're concerned about coming off as polite and well-mannered, the best way to to express is it in the interview itself... not a contrived thank-you e-mail that the interviewer probably won't get anyway and won't influence his decision even if it does.
It can't hurt (much), but it doesn't help much either. As nhashem says, if you want to make a difference, do it in the interview itself. That's what counts, not the old school advice of a thank you note, an objective statement, or heavyweight paper.
Whenever I'm in a hiring position, I take a close look at the candidate's courtesy and interpersonal skills. Candidates who are polite, even to the receptionist, and who follow up with a thank-you email always get a little bump in "points" in my book.
The person who is thoughtful enough to thank me for my time not only understands social protocol, but is more likely to be respectful of others around the office.
It's not enough to get you hired if you don't have the skills for the job. But if there's a tie, the person who sent me a thank-you note will always get the job over the person who didn't.
And ties like this have happened in my experience.
So the moral is that you just never know if it's going to matter or not -- so you might as well do it.
http://www.collegegrad.com/interview/thankyouletterafterinte...
Sending a Thank You email takes almost no effort. Sending a Thank You letter in the mail takes a bit of effort. Consider a job fair where a recruiter gets a hundred resumes. Could sending a sincere Thank You note in the mail possibly make you stand out from the crowd? Most especially in these days of longer hiring cycles where the difference between a minute of effort to send an email and the ten minutes to write, print, sign (with blue ink to contrast from black printer ink), and mail might make a difference.
There is a better site and a book, http://collegegrad.com that really exposed the behind-the-scenes of hiring because it was written by a hiring manager. Pretty much everything I'm saying here has been paraphrased. As the site says, the secret to an effective Thank You letter is to restate your interest in the position after thanking them and most important have a future promise to follow-up: "I will call you next Wednesday at 3pm to discuss this further" Even if you don't get the person on the line, by calling when you said you would - you earn professional credibility.
Your 'thank you' can include specifics of the conversation that interested you, or more questions that you have in order to show your interest. It's another opportunity to communicate with someone you may want to work with.
I was on the fence between the two top people. Both were great, right out of college and seemed eager to learn. One sent a thank you card, the other did not.
I hired the one that didn't send a thank you card because I was more concerned about keeping out a (potential) kiss-ass in the thank you note writer.
Also, I don't think a thank you note is courteous. If I believed that I'd also need to think that not sending a thank you note is a sign of an absence of courtesy.
Making courtesy a function of thank you notes would cause them be thrown out ad nauseum and would lose some meaning.
Now i was briefly a hiring manager before and i hated getting follow up emails from people i interviewed. It is so obvious that people know it's something they have to do and just kicked out these canned scripted thank you messages. Most people's inboxes are already full and they are busy why would they want this?
And my personal opinion is that, honestly they should be thanking you. I mean, they need help. They put out a "Help Wanted". You have skills that can help them. They asked if you wouldn't mind taking 3 hours out of your work day so you could go down to meet several of their team members so they could evaluate you and help them make certain they are hiring the right person. Maybe they should be thanking you?? It's a two-way street.
If you can't bother or aren't excited enough to email the people you interviewed with, who will potentially be the people you spend 50% of your waking hours with if you get the job, why bother applying in the first place?
I interviewed with a Y-Combinator funded startup, and having felt that the interview went really well I awaited the plan for moving forward. Days turned into weeks turned into months and eventually I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to get a call. It was upsetting not only because I really wanted the job but because I spent those weeks hoping just to hear anything at all, whether it was good or bad, so I could move forward or move on.
Interestingly enough, 6 months later the position is still listed as open.
Actually, despite it being the common advice, they are quite rare to receive. So I tend to take notice and remember that person much later even if they are not selected. I would be likely to give the person another shot if they re-applied for another position, or pass their resume along to another position where I think they'd fit better. I'd never do that for someone who didn't follow up.
I'm also with edw519 on the courtesy front, it's just that in this modern day and age I find that people's attention spans when it comes to job worries are more suited to a quick email than a letter a few days later.
(funnily enough, the job I have now is the only one I didn't bother sending thank you emails for, since after weeks of interviewing I got tired of the whole ritual. go figure.)