Career Journal: The Jungle
By By Kris Maher, The Wall Street Journal
Following Up Effectively
IN JANUARY, Robin Barrett traveled two hours and braved a snowstorm to make it to a job interview. For several weeks afterward, she phoned the hiring manager and sent e-mails to follow up on the Web developer position. But she never heard a word back.
It wasn’t the first time that Ms. Barrett, who is 33 years old and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., hadn’t been able to get a response from a hiring manager. “It’s disheartening,” she says. “You don’t know what to do. You don’t want to become a pest, in case you’re on their periphery.”
In the current rocky market, with job searches taking longer than they have in a decade, job seekers often spend weeks or even months in limbo after an interview, waiting to hear from a hiring manager. It is a complete reversal of the solicitous mind-set of the 1990s, when managers often bent over backwards to woo and keep workers. These days, they hold all the cards. Amid an expected war and sluggish economy, budgets are in flux and funding for positions is often up in the air. Consequently, managers often can’t, or simply don’t, keep up with candidates who lose out.
Even if there is a good reason, such peremptory rejections can add immeasurably to the burdens of job seekers. “To me, there’s no excuse if you’ve talked to someone over the phone or brought them in for an interview: You owe it to them to get back to them personally,” says Chris Whitney, a 50-year-old staffing professional in Redmond, Wash., who has been searching for a full-time position since being laid off in August 2001.
Even as a senior manager, Ms. Whitney says, she has problems getting her phone calls returned to learn about a position or to find out why her years of experience didn’t qualify her for a particular post. “I’ve met very good people,” says Ms. Whitney, “but it does amaze me that the majority are just so unsympathetic.”
So what can you do if you are beginning to suspect that a hiring manager has either forgotten about you or is just stringing you along?
The first rule of following up with a hiring manager is to give something useful rather than just ask for information, says David Schmier, president of GetHired.com, a New York company that teaches job-finding skills. “Give them a good reason to open up your e-mail or to take your call,” he says.
Many people send a note along the lines of, “Hi. Just checking in. I wondered if you made a decision yet,” notes Mr. Schmier. He says that messages like that work against job seekers because they add clutter to a manager’s already crowded day and offer nothing beyond an annoying reminder.
Mr. Schmier suggests that job seekers send a link to an interesting article that pertains to a manager’s business and provide a synopsis so the manager doesn’t have to actually read the entire article if he or she is pressed for time. He also advises sending a manager inexpensive tickets to a trade show, or suggestions for how to solve an issue facing that particular business. He counsels people not to offer free lunch or drinks. You want to build a degree of trust and obligation with the hiring manager, he says, with one caveat. “You always need to avoid the impression that you’re trying to bribe them.”
Mark Angott, president of Management Recruiters — North Oakland County, outside Detroit, says recruiters are facing the same bind about how to check on a company’s hiring progress. There’s “a fine line” about how often to follow up, he says, and it should be evaluated case by case, often depending on an organization’s culture and a hiring manager’s personality.
Remember that one thing hiring managers hate is too much contact. “If the decision hasn’t been made, more communication is not going to help the cause,” he says. He also advises candidates not to stretch the truth. You can say that you “hope” or “expect” to get another offer, he says. “If you do have another offer, that’s legitimate.”
Get permission to follow up at the end of the interview. Lori Davila, a career coach based in Atlanta, recommends that clients ask hiring managers directly how often they can call or e-mail. And if it looks like a position has been filled or else is going nowhere, cut your losses, conserve your energy and move on. “You don’t want to spend your time following up on every lead,” she says. “You have to qualify which of the opportunities are still valid for you.”
Hiring managers say the flood of candidates is partly to blame for lapses in getting back to candidates. At IMlogic Inc., a Waltham, Mass., provider of instant-messaging software, founder and Chief Executive Francis deSouza says the company had to sort through 1,533 resumes to fill 10 openings in the past three months. IMlogic interviewed 100 candidates, and Mr. de-Souza acknowledges that a few may have slipped through the cracks and not been notified. “I know there are, and I feel awful about it,” he says.
He says he appreciates when job seekers keep in touch in a way that doesn’t require a response from him. “There may not be a fit right now, but to the extent that you leave things in a positive way, tha