Thank You Letters revisited

a simple thank you letter

Thank you letters

Thank You letters are a huge opportunity to solidify your relationship with your recruiter, network, customer base, and potential co-workers/managers.

If I hold a door open for someone and they walk through without acknowledging my effort, I get slightly bent.  I am not asking for much.  A head nod is enough, and I don’t think I am alone. If I take the time to set up an interview, 45 minutes to share a little bit about our company and answer questions, is a “thank you” too much?

It is Christmas Eve, and I should be on the desk reflecting on a great 2010 with a cigar, but here I am ranting again.

I have posted about why I think thank you letters are so important in the past.    After interviewing ten recent college grads in the past week and a half and not getting a single “thank you,” I am not only disappointed, I am a little pissed.  At one point this morning, I thought, “The first person to say thanks you will get the fricken job.”

The job posting

Hipster Office Admin with a smartphone wanted to keep our chaotic lives sane.  In other words, you could be running for 6 cases of Diet Coke in the morning, booking corporate travel, and keeping our code monkeys at their desk by ensuring they don’t have to worry about water, food, shelter, or their precious Sennheiser headphones.

This is an entry-level job, and the pay is commensurate.  What this translates to is that 95% of the candidates are recent grads or just a few years out of school.

I interviewed the first candidate and when I didn’t get a thank you, I was a stumped, and justified it in my mind as “their loss”.  (Yes, I did want to hire them. I must have stunk up the interview room.)

By interview number three, I was getting a bit worried.  The candidates seem genuinely interested in the position, but still no “thank you letters.”

Qualifications

Most candidates graduated with a 3.5 GPA and have traveled or tried new foods (shows how open they are to different cultures and ideas). The candidates had worked a part-time or full-time job while going to school (shows they can take a 50-hour work week). The cover letters mimicked the tone of our quirky ad that said we don’t like resumes and want to hear stories (anyone can cut and paste a cover letter, but writing takes time and thought).

By candidate number 7, I was hoping for a thank you letter, and when nothing turned up, I got a little pissed.  As an employee, I would have been stoked to work alongside 5 of these seven candidates.

I don’t have children, but I do have dogs.  I can’t blame the dog for their behavior.  There are no bad dogs, just bad dog owners.  Or maybe just bad doggie schools. Yeah, I just said that.

The thing is, people are checking in to see what the progress is.  Some send me blog links to show how comfortable they are with the Net.  But no “thank you”.   When folks asked what the pay was (yes, in the first interview, don’t get me started), I turned it around and asked them what they needed. Not once have I said that is too much.  I have always let them know we are both talking the same language.

What Thank you letters do

Reinforce that you want the job.

Acknowledge that someone took the time to answer your questions.

It is an opportunity to give another example of why you are the right candidate for the position.

Am I just “old”?  I have gone back and forth.  Do I decline these candidates and explain what they are missing, turning good candidates into great ones?  Selfishly, I worry about them going to the competition. The way I try to help?  HRNasty.com

Which is why I started this blog.   People are getting declined, and they don’t even know why.

Give yourself choices and negotiating power

Even if you decide you don’t want the job, always try to put yourself in a situation where you are declining the position vs. you are getting declined. In the least you can create negotiating power. Change the role into something that works for you. 

Here is why the Thank You is so important to me.  Yes, there is a bit of courtesy and civility involved, but more importantly, this position will involve interacting with our investors, our board, our customers, and the rest of the team.  And aren’t all positions?  I want to work with someone gracious enough to take the time to say thank you.  This person doesn’t have to be reminded.  Common courtesy is ingrained in their DNA.   I used to say I wanted a letter via the postal mail (pre-email).  Now, I would take a text that says “ty.”

Where is that cigar?

Happy Holidays

HRNasty

See you at the after party,
HRNasty

nasty: an unreal maneuver of incredible technique, something that is ridiculously good, tricky, and manipulative but with a result that can’t help but be admired, a phrase used to describe someone good at something. “He has a nasty forkball”.

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