First of all,
don’t sell yourself short! Thinking that because you don’t think the interview went that well that you’re not going to get a job offer – you don’t know that. You don’t know by comparison how the other candidates did in the job interview.
They may have done as good, maybe not as good. So, you want to send a thank you email after the interview, even if you think you didn’t get the job. What I’d like to interject here is the idea that you don’t know if you got the job or not.
They haven’t made a decision. You just had the interview.
You want to try…
to send the follow up thank you 24 to 48 hours afterward. No later than 48 hours. If you can do it when you get home (provided it was in person) that’s the best thing to do. If you forgot, you still have the next day to do it and it’s going to be fine. If it was a virtual interview, you could send the follow up thank you after the interview, but I suggest you take some time to debrief. Think about the interview and the things that stood out so that you can touch on that (briefly) in the email.
Just don’t make it too long or too wordy when you do send a follow-up email. It shouldn’t be any more than 2 short paragraphs, meaning that you have two sentences in the first paragraph and maybe two or three in the second paragraph – and make it sound positive!! Assume you will get an offer – how does that sound? Make it sound like that!
Next week…part 2
Love and light,
