Interview Follow Up: What’s the Next Step?

If you’ve had your interview and you’ve sent your thank you note, what do you do now? If it’s been a week (don’t wait longer than that), you need to call the hiring manager to see what’s going on. Where are they in the hiring process? Are you being considered? What do you need to do to prove that you’re the one? It can feel like a tricky situation, and in a way, it is. If you don’t call, you’ll give the impression that you don’t care that much about the job. If you call and push too hard, you’ll risk coming across as too pushy and annoying. But it’s not that hard to hit the right balance. When you call the hiring manager, remember that your goal is to get to the next step. If they have some other things they need to consider, you need to provide the extra evidence they need. If they’re on the fence, you need to ask for a breakfast, lunch, or dinner meeting so they can spend some extra time with you. Hopefully, if they get to know you better, they’ll see those attributes, skill sets and experiences you have that make you a great fit for the job and their organization. That’s all you have to do—get to the next step. Not necessarily the offer, or even another interview. Just the next step. Find out what’s holding them up, and help them solve that problem by providing them with a solution, so that they can get on down the road to hiring you.