Thank You Letters

IT_Admin

I had a interivew for a Network Admin job on friday, it was the first round of interview's. I was told that they would contact me for the second round of interviews. My question is am I suppose to send a thank you letter out after every round interviews? Also they said that there would 3, maybe 4 rounds of interviews. Is this typical to have this many interviews?

royal

My current job I had 7 interviews. 3 phone interviews followed by 4 in person interviews. I sent a thank you letter twice. Once to the HR recruiter after the phone interviews and another to the same person after the in person interviews. When I was working at an old job, my boss at that time told me he hired me over another potential candidate because I sent a thank you letter. I absolutely would not send a resume without a proper cover letter that is targeted towards that company. I also would never not send a thank you letter to the HR person or whoever it may be that makes the final decision on whether you are hired or not. Sending a thank you letter to each person is also not a bad thing. It can only help you.

SRTMCSE

I sent a thank you letter to both of my interviewers, the IT director and network manager, after my in person with them. I had 2 more in person interviews with them afterwards but by that time we had built a relationship. Sending a thank you letter is just courteous and makes you stick out in their mind.

BigTone

I had an interview yesterday (i'll make a separte post about that in a minute).... Regarding the sending of thank you letters... Is email ok? I recieved cards from both guys with the address and e-mails.

With technology how it is - is it ok just to send the thank you letters via e-mail?

SRTMCSE

I'm sure some places don't mind but there is nothing like a nicely worded letter hand signed. E-mail can't replace that, plus you know pretty well that they'll get it, with e-mail it may just get lost in the tons of e-mail they get.

Worktruck

I agree with SRTMCSE. It's just not that impressive to send them an email and you never know if they'll see it as doing something half hearted, and of course if someone else actually sent in a thank you letter you never know if that will put them over the top. That's what I see when managers want to hire someone they want someone who tries to stand apart from everyone else in the pact, in a good way of course.

Besides your email getting lost with the all the other email the company sends. Unless you've coresponding with them back and forth via email already their is a chance that your email provider is filtered out by the company and they'll never even see it.

jwlazar

Agreed. Ironically, nothing gets more attention these days then a tangible letterhead addressed personally to the recruiter.

As per follow-up interviews, be persistent but also weary. By leading on and stretching things out, you might give the wrong impression that YOUR time isn't important to them. IMO, there should be no reason for a company to have 2-3 interviews to sum up a candidate and make a definitive conclusion. If you're filing multiple applications for several positions, indicate that you are eager to work as soon as possible so the burden is on them to hire you within due time.

AnthonyJD81

Worktruck wrote:

I agree with SRTMCSE. It's just not that impressive to send them an email and you never know if they'll see it as doing something half hearted, and of course if someone else actually sent in a thank you letter you never know if that will put them over the top. That's what I see when managers want to hire someone they want someone who tries to stand apart from everyone else in the pact, in a good way of course.

Besides your email getting lost with the all the other email the company sends. Unless you've coresponding with them back and forth via email already their is a chance that your email provider is filtered out by the company and they'll never even see it.

Worktruck, if a thank you letter was filtered by a spam or junkmail device, that would be pretty bad. Assuming there are no random words or phrases, or attached and potentially harmful files, there should be no reason it would get blocked. If it is getting blocked, the firewall config may need to be modified.

The whole idea behing a thank you after a job interview is to briefly say thanks out of courtesy and let them know that you are still highly interested. Email does this wonderfully as it saves paper handling and is near immediate.

Remember, keep it short, consise, and to the point to convey good character!

malcybood

Anyone who has experience of this type of thing could you advise me on my situation.

I live in the UK and was contacted by a company in Germany for a potential relocation. The person that contacted me initially sent me an email to setup an "informal chat" about the role, what I was doing, what I thought about moving from the UK to Germany etc etc and we did have that phone call this evening fopr about 30 minutes.

I believe it went well and he gave me some encouraging feedback in the fact he said he liked alot about my CV and what I had to say in regard to my logical troubleshooting ability.

He rounded it up by saying "I'll be in touch" and I was going to send a thank you email especially as he had contacted me from Germany and mentioned (in jest I'm sure) "my mobile bill is going to be extortionate."

The fact that this company is in a different part of Europe, is it more impressive for me to send a hard copy letter to Germany or is email adequite? Bearing in mind the "official" formal interview is yet to take place.

Feedback appreciated

P.S. I don't want to come across as if I'm sucking up either!!!

AnthonyJD81

I would think email would be fine, especially since it was an informal phone conversation...basically a pre-screen type deal.

A few years back I phoned with a couple companies in Kuwait about work. I followed up with a short email aftwards. I basically thanked them for their time with discussing the opportunity, expressed my continued interest in the position, and was looking forward to speaking with them again. Nonetheless, another interview followed and I ended up working overseas for a year.

What a great experience it was (off-topic)

There is nothing wrong with a simple email including a few sentences to follow up with. I can not see any harm in that. To be honest, I think they would value your demonstrated efforts

malcybood

AnthonyJD81 wrote:

I would think email would be fine, especially since it was an informal phone conversation...basically a pre-screen type deal.

A few years back I phoned with a couple companies in Kuwait about work. I followed up with a short email aftwards. I basically thanked them for their time with discussing the opportunity, expressed my continued interest in the position, and was looking forward to speaking with them again. Nonetheless, another interview followed and I ended up working overseas for a year.

What a great experience it was (off-topic)

There is nothing wrong with a simple email including a few sentences to follow up with. I can not see any harm in that. To be honest, I think they would value your demonstrated efforts

Thanks for the reply

I just sent an email 2 sentences long basically saying thank you for taking the time to contact me in regard to the role and I look forward to hearing from him again.

Yes during the informal chat I said would you like me to tell me a bit about myself then and he said yes but I don't want the hard sell just tell me what you do.....so I just kept it simple and said I do support for a UK company as a field engineer and have 4 years exp all in all in phone and field support....seemed okay with that

he then asked me a few simple techy questions about configuring switch port speeds and other comms related stuff, which i had no problem answering and had a general chat so I'll just sit tight and see what happens

Thanks again for the advice

AnthonyJD81

malcybood wrote:

he then asked me a few simple techy questions about configuring switch port speeds and other comms related stuff, which i had no problem answering and had a general chat so I'll just sit tight and see what happens

Thanks again for the advice

good luck and let us know how you make out with this one!