Often times I remind people to send a thank you note after an interview and I’m met with some shock. “Really? – use the mail?” That’s right! That thing that brings you bills, magazines and ungodly amounts of advertisements can also be used for personal correspondence….
Many people I talk to assume that this is an either or type of thing. Either you shoot off a quick thank you email that shows up immediately or you do the more formal, antiquated thing. Honestly, I think that the only way to be truly safe is to do both. The reasons are as follows:
- In our lazy world email thank yous are expected. Failure to do so will make you look out of touch or uninterested.
- Sending an email has significant value – you can create a dialogue
- Sending something in the mail will set you apart from the pack. I estimate that 25% of people actually go to this trouble
So… What should be in your email and note? Here are the basics:
Thank You Note
Your thank you note should be short and sweet. Go and buy a professional looking, generic and blank card at Target or Wal-Mart (Make sure that it isn’t for Weddings or Babys). With a nice ball point pin and in your best penmanship write a simple message. Something like:
Dear Mr. Ferguson,
Thanks for the wonderful meeting on Tuesday. It was a pleasure to meet you and learn more about your company. I look forward to hearing from you soon!
Sincerely,
Scott Thompson
A couple of things not to do. Don’t add a gift card or anything else in the envelope. That’s tacky. Also for the ladies out there – refrain from spraying perfume on the envelope. This seems outdated but I’ve seen these things happen.
Finally, I’ve found that it is pretty easy to prepare this the night before. Write out the envelope and put a stamp on it. Send it out immediately after the interview.
Thank You Email
I’ve found that employers expect a thank you email as they have given up on most of us having Emily Post-like manners. You should treat your thank you email similarly to the thank you note in that it should be short and sweet. However, because of the flexibility of the medium you can add a little bit more. I suggest that you add two things.
First, after thanking them for the opportunity to meet specifically mention something in the interview that you found to help your case. Also mention that you have a formal thank you in the mail. Say something like:
Dear Mr. Ferguson,
Thanks for the wonderful meeting on Tuesday. I just mailed you a note thanking you for your time but wanted to immediately thank you as well. It was a pleasure to meet you and learn more about your company. I was excited to hear about your firm’s focus on puppetry as I interned at Sesame Street and am a huge fan of Jim Henson.
From there the next step is to write some form of question. The reason I suggest adding a question is because email gives you the unique ability to continue the interview after the fact. You can create a dialogue. Because of this you need to add a question that is both open ended and insightful. Be careful here as it also needs to be easy to answer. A bad question would be about the benefits – the only response you can give is “thanks!” Instead shoot for something like this:
“After our meeting I was thinking about your puppet design philosophy. Do you encourage puppeteers to create their own characters?”
So there you go – that’s my spiel about thank you’s. One last bonus tip to go with this. Don’t become an email stalker. Just because you now have an email address doesn’t mean you should use it. If you thank you is not responded to you should read into it as it means one of two things. Either they aren’t interested or they don’t like to have additional conversations with candidates outside of the interview setting.
Have a great week!!!!
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