Resume sent. Follow up letterI sent my resume last Thursday in response to an open position that I am really interested in. What is the protocol for sending a follow-up letter if I have not heard back from the company? I am qualified for the job and sent a cover letter outlining exactly what skills meet their requirements. Should I send a follow-up letter? I've already left the contact a voicemail message. Thanks in advance for any advice. Are you talking about Thursday the 18th? If so, that was technically only three business days ago and way too soon to for a follow up inquiry. If you are speaking of Thursday the 11th, that is different because that would be closer to an acceptable inquiry limit. Since you already left a voice mail, however, you should wait for at least this Thursday or Friday. Remember, though, that most hiring managers and/or HR people will not respond to inquiries of any type. (My opinion of those particular mangers is that they are incredibly unprofessional. I can understand not replying to a resume when it is first sent [barely, but I can understand], but since relatively few people bother to express continued interest, I cannot understand not replying to that. It takes 30 seconds to hit the reply button, copy and paste a response and send. If busy, delegate.)
It depends on the company or department. My experience with applying for a state job has been eye opening. The job posting is open for 10 days. They wait another 7 days to make sure that all items postmarked are in to the personnell department. They then spend the next few days processing the applications to see which them meet the requirements and which are unqualified. They then take the qualified applications and check to see if the information is varifiable (I had to send in a college transcript so it takes a week to ten days). They then package the qualified and varified information and send it to the hiring manager through internal transportation (another 3 to 5 days). The manager who does the interviews has to schdule a time when the manager and the supervisors who will be training the new employee can go through the information. Another week passes as they finalize the list and start making appointments for interviews. With another week for interviews - it would seem we would be getting close, but no. They have to send the final selection (two names) back to the state capital to be approved by the department heads. With approval (another week) the manager can contact the new empolyee and tell them to contact the personell department to start the HR paperwork. When I applied for the state job on the second day of its posting, I thought that I would hear something in a couple of weeks. Luckily, I had a friend in the department where I was applying for a job and he put me in contact with the manager. He informed me that the hiring process would take 2 to 3 months to complete, especially since there was no budget for the position until October 1 (he told me this on August 12th). He also told me that they hire people on the 1st and the 15th to keep the paperwork simple for HR. It turns out that I made the final selection with a very high recommendation from the local manager, but was knocked out by the department head at the capital when it was decided to take the internal candidate over any external one. | |
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Career Tips
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