You’ve had an interview for a role you are interested in, what do you do next to try and secure an offer? There is no question that you follow-up but how do you do it so that you break through all the noise that crosses your future bosses desk?
Try and make a personal connection and make sure your response isn’t canned.
Nick Cicero of Klout shares 3 Tips to Master the Art of the Follow up:
Timing
You want to send the first follow up within a couple days. While I agree with Nick on the timing, he refers to this contact as an email, which I believe, should be a written note. If you don’t hear anything within a week you should follow up with an email. Remember there is a fine balance between following up and becoming a pest.
If your first two contacts go unanswered it is probably best to give it more time before you reach out again. It is possible that things have been delayed and the lack of contact is not related to your candidacy.
Tact
Written communication, whether digital or print, does not have the same benefit of a verbal or even face-to-face conversation [Tweet This] so you have to be sure that your words on the page or screen are in a gracious and friendly tone.
Try and make a personal connection and make sure your response isn’t canned [Tweet This]. And there isn’t anything wrong with asking them how they’d like you to reach out to them – phone or email. People definitely have a preference.
Tools
Hopefully you are treating your job search like a real job or a project you’d be managing, and if you are taking it seriously you may need some tools to keep you organized. At a minimum you can use your calendar to schedule reminders of when to follow up with people and a spreadsheet to log where you have applied, the role, the date of the interview and the names of your contacts at the organization. You can add in notes about the people you’ve met with, like what their interests may be, this information can be used to make that personal connections in you follow ups.
If you need some inspiration check out Jonathan Milligan’s blog post with 4 examples of follow up emails.