“Thank God for that” I hear you say when you get home and sit
down with a cup of tea and the feeling of overwhelming stress
starts to drift from your body and a warm feeling of relief
enters your soul! However, there is still one more job to do
before you sit back and wait for the post to drop on your door
mat with the job offer and that is write a letter to your
interviewer offering your thanks for the time afforded to you –
and you need to do it immediately prior to a decision being made
about the job. After all it is only courteous and professional
to thank someone for the time they have given you. A short
letter of thanks to the interviewer is going to give the
impression that you have manners, that you really have
appreciated the time given to you, that you are a professional
person who has good and upstanding morals and that you want to
stand out from the crowd to prove that the job really is
important to you. It sounds old fashioned but for most employers
these are all qualities that an interviewer will be looking for
in their ideal candidate and if the decision in close between
you and a competitor it could tip the scales in your favour.
There is another purpose to writing a thank you letter and that
is that you will be one of the few that will bother to put any
effort into doing so. What will
this achieve? Well when it comes to selection time if you are
the only person to have written a thank you letter that will be
a plus point above everyone else. In turn you will stand out
from the crowd and your name will undoubtedly leave a lasting
impression in the interviewers mind. I am not saying that this
is going to swing the job in your favour, as there are going to
be many factors involved when the interviewer is making his or
her decision, but it could do!
What does the letter need to say? Only you can decide what to
put in your letter but it could be something along the lines of
“Thank you for giving me the opportunity of meeting with you
this afternoon I very much appreciate the time you have afforded
to me. I would like to say that I am very interested in the job
and should there be anything further you would like me to
clarify please contact me on my mobile number provided on the
top of my CV. I look forward to hearing from you in due course.”
It might be that there was something you forgot to tell them
about yourself at the interview and you could add this but keep
it brief and only add it if it really is relevant. The idea is
for the interviewer to read and remember the letter not have to
spend fifteen minutes reading it.
Once you have finished your letter and rushed down to the post
box to get it off first class it’s probably a good idea to go
back and reflect for a short time on how the interview went.
There might have been areas where you felt you said the wrong
thing or there were things you wished you had said but forgot.
You may have made comments that your interviewer appeared
impressed by, points that you may undoubtedly wish to use in the
future at other interviews should you not get this job or by the
same token, questions you didn’t feel you gave good answers to –
you get the drift, try and analyse the whole interview as best
as you can and jot down any plus points you can come up with or
ways in which you can improve your general technique for the
future. If you don’t jot them down within a day or so you will
have forgotten them so even if you only have a scrap piece of
paper write them on it – you never know when they may come in
useful.
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