When to follow up after first interviewLast week I interviewed with two companies. One was a phone interview with the HR department and the other was in person and i met with the hiring manager and HR dept. How long should one wait before contacting the companies? I don' t know how to find the name of the hiring managr for the first interview (phone with HR). The person you spoke with in HR for the phone interview is your only contact for that company. She is the one who passed your name to the hiring manager or not and most likely will not give you the name of that person. You might try the receptionist and ask her for the person who is doing the hiring for that position, but unless she is extremely knowledgable, will pass you on to the HR. People set up interviews via phone so that the actual hiring authority isn't "wasting" his/her time with candidates who are "not acceptable". For the face to face interview, contact them both. Not at the same time, but first the hiring manager and then, if no answer, the HR. You sent the thank you note to them both, or you should have since they both were involved. Generally speaking, though, when to follow up depends on how long ago your interview was. Thank yous should go out (in my opinion) no more than 24 hours after the interview and follow up "am I close to be hired" letters should probably wait until a couple of days after you were told you would be contacted. For example: if the interviewer says she "hopes to make a decision by Friday" call on the Tuesday afternoon following. I always do my thank yous immediately after the interview happens. This time around no one gave a "decision date" so I am pretty unsure about what to think of that. The one about the phone interview...its really tough to even find out which department this job would be in. Its in publishing and they have a ton of different titles and divisions, jobs in each of those etc up so that too has me a bit confused. I don' t think a receptionist woudl be of any help in that case, but i don' t have a problem contacting the person who initially contacted me for the phone interview. Another thing that I am iffy about is almost every job posting has "NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE!" and I really don' t know if its worth jeopardizing my chances by calling. In smaller companies it would be easier to call the receptionist and be passed through him/her, but when the company is larger and consists of many departments within departments within departments its really a tough call, especially when the job descrips are so vague. The company being so large with so many departments each with different jobs available is why the receptinist would send you to HR. The job that you had the face to face and you were not informed of a decision date, I would wait one week and 1 1/2 days after your interview to contact them. When the job says NO PHONE CALLS it is usually because the person doing HR doesn't have the time or patience to handle all the applicants and simply does not want to be bombarded with people asking questions that are better left for the inteview itself. They prefer to decide on the candidates via cover letter, resume and initial phone contact. Many people will disagree with me on this point, and that is fine (they can have their opinion) but as far as I am concerned, the NO PHONE CALLS is not directed at "after the interview" candidates. When I was filling out on-line applications, the websites may have gone funny and my information wasn't submitted properly. Realizing this, I would call even though they had the NO PHONE CALL sign up. In almost every case, the phone calls were appreciated because the only way they knew something was wrong with the site was when people called. In one case, I not only was invited to the company to fill out the application on the supervisor's computer, but I was invited to fill out applications for internal jobs I didn't even know they were hiring for. I actually met with three hiring managers on that day. I received two job offers from them but had already accepted something else by that time. So, absolutely NO PHONE CALLS never stopped me if there was a valid reason for my calling. | |
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