How to Follow Up After Your Interview

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1:04I think they liked me. I think I'm going to get it. Am I going to get it? I don't know. What do I do now?

1:17While waiting to hear back, what do you do? Well, there's a few things that can set you up for success. Let me say first that the hardest work is done. The interview, that's over. But the This period after the interview of uncertainty and anticipation, that can feel almost hard. I talked to Yishen Shen. She's the Associate Director of Career Services at Harvard Law School. She's coached hundreds of students in the art of landing a job, from writing resumes to interview skills to the basic follow-up process. We get questions all the time. It's like, oh my god, it's been a week since my interview.

1:54What should I be doing now? I'm getting nervous. We try to help them, you know, manage that situation. Okay, let's play this out as close to real as possible. Let's say I just had a job interview. What do I do next? Well, pat yourself on the back. You know, you did it, you survived it. Take a deep breath. I think you should stop and maybe write some notes for yourself so you remember who it was that you interviewed with and maybe like, you know, what you might have talked about with that person. If you have any follow-up questions about that person's responsibility or what they talked about, that could be something that you note.

2:35Okay, you have your notes written out. I met with three people. Sasha will be my manager and there's a potential project I could lead. I have my notes. Now what? Within a day, too, I do recommend, you know, sending a thank you note, specifically email to the people or at least one of the people that you met with. And certainly you can extend a thank you to the rest of the teams. Can you give me kind of an example of what a good thank you note would sound like? Right. Nothing too long. I mean, I am talking about maybe one or two paragraphs in length. Dear so-and-so, thank you so much for the opportunity to meet with you and your team.

3:19I'm really excited about the job opportunity at so-and-so. And maybe in the email, you might mention in one sentence or two about something that you discussed that really sparked your interest about the opportunity. And then just simply close with, I look forward to hearing from you. You shouldn't stress not to throw more information at them at this stage in your thank you email. No more work samples, no more ideas. you're really just following up to say thank you. Wait, what if I don't have their email? Like I have the HR person's email, but not the person I actually talked to. Well, I think that if you don't have their email address, I think that LinkedIn messaging is fine.

4:07Okay. So I took the notes after the job interview. I wrote a clear and concise thank you note. and now I'm just waiting.

4:26I'm done now, right? Another thing I would make sure to do is to clean up your voicemail box, honestly. Lots of spam calls, it looks like. I don't know who that was from. Delete. Make sure you have a professional greeting on that voicemail box. I can't come to the phone right now. Please leave a message and I'll give you a call back. Bye. Almost. Hi, you've reached Kelsey Alpeo. I can't come to the phone right now, so please leave a message and I'll give you a call back. That's good. Am I kind of like off the hook? Like, is there nothing else to do or is there a next step I should be thinking about?

5:06If you gave the employer references, for example, I might, you know, contact the references that you listed and give them an update on your career aspirations, your job search, and let them know that they may be contacted by this employer that you just interviewed with. Hi, how are you? I put you down as a reference and you're going to get a call later today and I need you to tell them that I work great on teams and I'm a really good collaborator and that's it. Okay, bye. At this point, Yishan says to kind of dial it back a bit and just give this whole job thing some thought. Really reflect on what you heard during the interview and ask yourself what I would do if I got this offer.

5:51You know, what did you like about the opportunity? What questions do you still have? Understand the terms of the employment and make sure that that is what you want. I want the job. Okay, I like definitely want the job and I want it so bad now I'm like freaking out because I haven't heard back from them in like a week. What should I do in that situation? This can be hard with you if you're nervous, but would you want somebody emailing you every day, every other day while you're trying to make a decision? No. It's possible that they warned you that it could take two weeks, in which case just relax, you know, give them two weeks.

6:34But after that sort of period is up, I would email them and reiterate my interest, that I'm still very enthusiastic about the opportunity, offer if they have any more questions about your candidacy to answer them. So say you do get that voicemail or that call and it's actually a no, you didn't get the job. Is there anything that you can do to really be proactive with that connection you've made? Like can you ask for feedback? What do you say in that email kind of after the no? If they were extremely encouraging and you really felt that you made a nice connection with them, I would encourage people to ask for feedback.

7:16In the normal case where maybe you didn't have a strong connection, I would at the very least send them a, you know, oh, thank you so much for the opportunity. I'm really grateful for how much I learned about your organization in the process. If you're between the job interview and waiting to hear back, I get it. It's hard. It's a purgatory that can leave you expecting the worst. But hopefully these tips can help you stay proactive. And one last piece of advice, don't put all of your bets on one job application. Once this one is done, take a break and move on to the next one. There's always another opportunity out there.

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