Letters And Calls Advance Your Candidacy

Follow-up after an interview is a smart idea for a number of reasons. It is clearly the correct professional gesture, and also provides an opportunity to offer additional information or correct omissions: those points you meant to make but forgot in the heat of battle. Proper follow-up also demonstrates interest in the job and maintains real visibility for your candidacy, because most people just don't do it.

Follow-up letters and calls also advance your candidacy because employers are most likely to hire the people they remember, and your actions serve to maintain what is referred to in advertising as Top Of Mind Awareness, which is achieved through repetition of the advertising message. So your follow-up calls and emails work in the same way to keep you on the employer's radar!

The pacing of each job opportunity is different, so you must always determine at the end of your first interview what the next steps will be. Will there be further interviews? If so, you ask to schedule the meeting now, on the other hand, if this is the last interview, you determine when a decision will be made; the information you gather dictates how and when you will follow-up.

There are opportunities for follow-up thru emails, letters and phone calls, your delivery mediums changing with the time constraints of a given situation. If the decision is two weeks out you have time for a phone call now, an email to arrive later this week, a letter in the middle of next week, and perhaps another call a few days before decision time. On the other hand, if the decision is being made tomorrow at 4PM, you only have time for an email and a telephone call.

When you make a follow-up call or send an email, recognize that this is not a situation where you can ramble; you need to present a snapshot of a thorough professional who can get to the point. Take the time to write out what you are going to say, remembering that speech is very different from the written word; use bullet points, not something you can read 'word for word,' and you will sound more natural. BTW, the time you take to prepare a written script to keep yourself on track during a telephone call can also be used as your outline for supporting emails and letters.

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