Post-interview thank-you notes are a surprisingly controversial part of job searching.
Some hiring managers are staunch advocates of thank-you notes, to the point of insisting they won’t hire candidates who don’t send them. Others couldn’t care less and will barely glance at thank-you notes that arrive. On the job-seeker end of things, some people write them religiously after every interview, swearing by their efficacy, while others find them an annoying inconvenience. Still others have never heard they’re expected to send them at all.
For the record: Post-interview thank-you notes are a weird convention. Job interviews are business meetings, and you shouldn’t need to send a note thanking your interviewer for their time when they’re not expected to do the same for you. Lord knows there are already enough power dynamics at play during hiring, why create more? However, in many fields, thank-you notes are the convention, and dismissing them out of hand can put you at a disadvantage when you’re interviewing.
The problem is largely in their name: We should never have started calling them “thank-you notes” and should always have called them “follow-up notes,” because that’s really what they’re intended to be. You’re not actually thanking your interviewer; you’re continuing the conversation and strengthening the impression you made.
Because of the misnomer, too many people write notes that read like this:
Thank you for taking the time to meet with me yesterday to discuss the marketing manager position. I’m very interested in the role and look forward to hearing about next steps.
There’s very little point in sending that kind of note. It comes across as perfunctory (because it is) and doesn’t do much to strengthen your candidacy. It conveys little more than that you heard you were supposed to send a thank-you note, and so you did.
A good example of a thank-you email after an interview
Instead, a post-interview note should build on the conversation you had in the interview and show that you’ve (1) gone away and processed the discussion and (2) are still enthusiastic about the position. Here’s an example of a real-life (anonymized) thank-you note I received from a candidate who did this well:
I really enjoyed talking with you yesterday, and hearing more about where your team is headed. Based on our discussion, it sounds like you may be at a critical juncture in your work — simultaneously well-established and growing fast, expanding your new client initiatives and also working internally to strengthen your core.
If that is a fair characterization, it’s a tall order! It also feels very familiar to me over my 15-year arc of launching and expanding a communications team, and I would enjoy nothing more than rolling up my sleeves and helping you succeed — and particularly bringing the educator’s lens we discussed from my time working in schools.
I look forward to talking more with you and your team to see how I might be able to help you and your clients get where you want to go. If we’re a good match, I would be incredibly excited about the prospect of working together.
It demonstrates that the candidate was engaged during the interview (listening and not just waiting to talk about herself), shows that she understands the challenges she’d face in the role, talks a little about how she’d be able to help (without turning the note into a lengthy sales pitch), and conveys excitement about the job and interest in talking further.
That’s the content of the note. Now let’s run through other logistics.
Should you send the note via email or through the post?
Send your note by email. Not only is it much faster, but many people don’t even have physical office in-boxes these remote-work days, so a mailed note may never reach your intended recipient. And really, sending hand-written notes was always a bit of overkill. It’s business correspondence!
How soon after your interview should you send a thank-you email?
Send the note within a day or two of the interview, not immediately following it. You might think you’re being efficient by writing your notes ahead of time and hitting “send” once you’re home from the meeting, but don’t do that. Not only will you lose the chance to personalize the content based on what’s discussed in the interview, but sending it so quickly comes across as perfunctory, like you’re just checking off an item on your to-do list. You want your interviewer to know that you’ve spent time digesting the conversation and that your note reflects genuine thought and interest.
If you meet with multiple interviewers, should you send thank-you emails to all of them?
Ideally, yes! Vary the content a bit so they’re not identical.
What if you don’t have your interviewer’s email address?
Often you can figure it out if you have the email address of someone else at the company, since most use a standard configuration. So if you know that the HR manager’s email address is jane.smith@CompanyName.com, you can probably guess that Matilda Jones’s address is matilda.jones@CompanyName.com.
Otherwise, it’s fine to send along your note to the person there who you are in contact with (often HR or a recruiter) and ask them to pass it along to the person you want it to get to.
Should you expect a response to your thank-you email? Does it mean anything if you don’t get one?
Some interviewers will reply, but most won’t. Don’t read anything into it if you don’t receive a response. Some people think of it like replying to a thank-you note for a gift, where no response is necessary, lest it set off an endless cycle of “thank you for the thank you.”
Will a thank-you email really make or break your chances?
Not in most cases, but it will contribute to the overall picture of you as a candidate, just like lots of other little things in the hiring process, like whether you were sloppily groomed and how you interacted with the receptionist.
Of course, if you’re not the best candidate for the job, a thank-you note won’t change that. By the same token, if you’re clearly the strongest candidate, not sending a thank-you note probably won’t kill your chances. But if the decision has come down to you and another candidate, a thoughtfully written, substantive note has been known to tilt the scales.
And of course, there are interviewers who don’t care about thank-you notes at all. But there are still plenty who do, and the content of a note can sway their thinking. As a job candidate, you’re unlikely to know which type of person you’re dealing with, so it makes sense to spend ten minutes writing and sending the note.
Find even more career advice from Alison Green on her website, Ask a Manager. Got a question for her? Email askaboss@nymag.com (and read our submission terms here.)
