How to Follow Up After a Job Interview

Drop down on your knees and beg the interviewer to give you the job or you'll kill yourself!

NO, please don't follow that bit of nonsense advice, it really won't work!

The follow up you do after a job interview can depend entirely on how you got the interview. I'll try to give you some useful tips on which path to follow here:

RECRUITMENT AGENCY

If a recruitment agency arranged the job for you, it is not good practice to contact the company directly to find out how it went. You should contact the agent that organised the interview for you and let him/her give you feedback about how it all went. Even if the interviewer told you to their face that they were very impressed with you and that they would definitely be contacting you for a 2nd interview; do NOT contact them directly. It is unethical and could scupper your chances for the job in hand and future jobs through that agency if the agent felt you went behind their back and contacted the company directly. The agency has a contract with the employer to supply candidates, who they will get a fee for should the candidate be successful in the role. You do not know what relationship the agent has with the employer - the agent could be a family member of a senior person in the company and they would most certainly advise them that you went directly to the employer. If the company really did want you back for 2nd interview or they want to offer you the job, they WILL get in touch when they're ready.

DIRECT OR SPECULATIVE APPLICATION

If you applied for a job directly or sent the company a speculative application and they contacted you directly for an interview with a specific role in mind (or even if they didn't have a specific role in mind), you can always drop them a line in writing (via email or post) to say thank you for taking the time to meet with you and that you really enjoyed meeting with them and liked what you saw and heard about the company and would be very keen to work for such an organisation. Don't make grand statements such as "You'd really be foolish not to hire me!" (believe it or not, I've actually had comments like this from people in emails with their covering letters) - you're insulting the interviewer and/or making out that the business isn't successful already and only you can make it so! Keep it polite and friendly - not too informal and ensure that you sound like someone they'd want on their team. If you don't have their email address or don't want to wait for a postal letter to arrive, you could give them a call a day or two after the interview. This might or might not be appreciated depending on how it was left at the end of the interview and how busy the interviewer might be. Whatever you do, don't call up and say you need to speak with the interviewer urgently as if they're interrupted in a meeting just for you to say "Thanks for seeing me the other day. Have you made a decision yet?" the only answer you're likely to get is a big fat NO!

WORD OF MOUTH

If you were told about the job by a family member or friend or ex colleague and have had the interview on the basis that you know someone who works there, the best thing to do is not to hassle the person who put you in touch about the job but deal with the person who interviewed you. Often HR departments or Hiring Managers will not discuss you application with the person who put you forward as it's against protocol. A lot of companies have a bonus in place - if a staff member recommends someone to join who is then taken on, the staff member is rewarded with say 500 or 1000 or even more for doing so. This works out much cheaper than using an agency or advertising in the press in general and is a good incentive for staff. You will most likely not get any favouritism through knowing someone who already works there as the recruitment process always needs to be fair to avoid claims of discrimination, so don't assume you'll
automatically get the job because your best friend works there.

OVERALL TIPS

Any interviewer worth their salt will themselves tell you at the end of the interviewer what the next step will be. Often they will say that they still have other people to interview, even if they have made up their minds to offer you the position. Patience really is a virtue - no one ever lost a job because THEY didn't contact the company back when they company promised to contact them, but if you really want to keep your application and name in the forefront of the interviewer's mind a brief telephone calls 2 to 3 days after the interview in most cases does not hurt to remind them how good a fit you'll be and maybe to ask them if there were any more questions they had which you could clarify for them now. I've also found in the past that it works wonders if you call back and give them some additional info which you might not have told them at the interview, some technical skill you have which would be a great asset to them - it never hurts to advise of extra skills you have which would be useful to the company.

Good luck!