The era of the thank you note after a job interview is over.

Well, not the actual “thank you,” just the delivery system.

It’s critically important that you thank the interviewer for the opportunity, but it’s also critically important that you get it to him within 24 hours. And a handwritten, snail-mailed note just won’t do that. Send an email.

Watch the video to see why I believe sending a thank you email quickly is so important, and find out what you need to make sure you say in that email.

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Here’s a great resource for thank you note samples and templates!  Thank you notes are a great thing.  They can seem insignificant, especially if you feel that you knocked the interview out of the park, but they are important.  They give us one more chance to touch the hiring manager and make the case for hiring you.

One hiring manager called me a week after a phone interview with one of my candidates (BTW – we had been playing phone tag – that is a long time for some feedback).  The manager felt that the candidate was qualified but was reluctant to say that he wanted to move the candidate forward.  Then he asked if the candidate had talked with me after the interview and did the candidate ask for the hiring manager’s email address.  Yes, I had talked with the candidate and no - she had not asked for the email address.  Kiss of death.  That simple piece of information was the tipping point for him.  The candidate is a no go.  Why?  Probably, in this case it was only another data point.  But some managers feel it is a key piece of information.

Management of sales/marketing jobs often feel that if you don’t use all the tools to persuade them in your job search, you won’t use all of the tools you need to be successful in their position.  Don’t give someone an excuse not to hire you.

Everybody knows that you’ve got to send a thank you note after your interview, and yet I continue to be surprised by how many people don’t.  They really do make you stand out from the crowd, and they give you another opportunity to point out a key item or two in your favor…it should always be substantial.  But do them quickly.

E-mail thank you notes are entirely appropriate.  Handwritten thank yous are of the past.  They work only if you can get them out on the exact same day, because speed is a strength here.  Still, you should send an e-mail one because there are hiring decisions that happen while the post office still has your letter.

(Didn’t get the address?  Google the interviewer:  *@thecompanyname.com.  For instance, *@phcconsulting.com would get you my address and the address of everyone who works here.)

One of my sales candidates had a great interview, and was following my advice to send a thank you note to the hiring manager as quickly as possible. BUT, she sent the thank you note on her iphone, and made a mistake. She realized after she sent the note that she had misspelled a word, and she was devastated. That’s almost as bad as misspelling a word on your resume.

spell-check your job interview thank you notes

So, as her recruiter, I told her to go back to her computer and send another note:

“In my excitement over the job, I wanted to send you a thank you note as soon as possible. However, I realized that I misspelled ________. I’m embarrassed. It’s just not like me to make a mistake like that.” And so on. She ended the note with something positive, and the interview process went on. (In another situation, that would have ended her as a candidate for that job.)

The moral of the story: Be enthusiastic, send your thank you notes quickly, but take a breath and spell-check it before you send it. And maybe type it instead of texting it.

Did you just flub your job interview?  Were you awkward?  Did you forget some critical piece of information that will make them want to hire you?  Or did you make some other kind of job interview mistake?  Whatever it was–it just didn’t go well, and you know it.  But you still want the job.  What do you do? 

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Can’t get an interview?

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Here are 6 tried and true ways to separate you from other candidates and be the candidate everyone wants to hire:

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