How Important Are Post-Interview Thank You Notes?

Krissy Manzano: Hello, and welcome to the Blueprint Roundtable. I’m your host, Krissy Manzano, joined by Chatty Chuck Brockman and Moody Matt Lewers. The Blueprint Round Table is an ongoing series with our team and occasional guest. In each session, we ask the team a simple question related to trends and recruiting talent, and go to market for discussion, debate this week’s question.

Krissy Manzano: How important is it for a candidate to send you a thank you note after the interview?

Matt Lewers: I’ll go first. Yeah I’ll speak from a couple of perspectives here. As a recruiter, I don’t think it’s important, to be honest. It’s not something I ever looked for as a hiring manager. So if you’re speaking with a recruiter, is it a nice, is it a nice to have? Yes. Does it move the needle? No.

Matt Lewers: Does it show your awareness and your strategy and your follow up and your planning? To me, no, it doesn’t. I wear the same hat as a hiring manager also. It doesn’t hurt to send a note thanking you for the time, thanking me for the time. If you’re gonna bother to go to that extent, I would recommend also asking a few more questions that you didn’t get answered.

Matt Lewers: Surely something came up in the interview process that you, you have a follow up question on where they did, you ran out of time to get addressed. But I have never declined a candidate. This is me personally, never declined a candidate to move forward in the interview process if I thought they were a strong fit and they did not send a note. I know not everybody views it that way, but in today’s world, it’s almost, to me it’s just unnecessary. It’s almost brown-nosing to some extent, depending on the content of the letter. So let me pause, Chuck. I know I covered a bit of ground.

Chuck Brotman: No, I well, look, I’m gonna disagree, but I think you made a good point there at the end, and I think you speak to. The naming is just dumb, right? It’s it, we call these thank you notes. Like, nobody should feel obligated to send a thank you note and hiring managers like, get over yourselves and stop expecting thank you notes. All that said and done, as a candidate, you absolutely should routinely send follow up communication to anybody you’re interviewing with. If you have an interest in continuing discussions for the job. And that’s whether you’re interviewing for sales, customer success, marketing, or any role within an organization. Send follow up. Don’t rush it. You don’t need to flatter.

Chuck Brotman: Imagine you said, you know, brown nose people, but you should have something thoughtful to share about, a learning, a takeaway, confirming next steps. Make it a recap. But send some form of follow up routinely, every step in the way for opportunities you’re excited by. It is a great way to stay top of mind, to keep things moving, particularly with companies, hiring managers, even recruiters who aren’t always super organized.

Chuck Brotman: Obviously Matt, you’re like really organized, so I can see that in your role. Like it maybe doesn’t move the needle. I’m a little less organized. I certainly try to follow up. I don’t need to be flattered, but candidates, send follow up. If you want to call it a thank you note. Send a thank you note. stay on top of you know, opportunities you want to pursue and keep moving and doing that in a thoughtful way. Doesn’t have to be, you know, it shouldn’t be more than a few sentences, but it should be something tight and tailored to the opportunity you’re excited about, in my opinion.

Krissy Manzano: Okay. Question. Now that you both have gone through that, so you’re saying hiring managers, Chuck, on your side, you shouldn’t expect it, but candidates you should do it. So then shouldn’t hiring managers expect it, if it’s good for candidates to do it,

Chuck Brotman: It’s a good point. I suppose, yeah. I mean, I suppose, yes, to the extent that to the extent that like disciplined candidates in today’s job market are routinely setting follow up. As a candidate, you should know if you’re not doing that, because you choose not to, you may be putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage.

Matt Lewers: Yeah. think what I’m hearing too, Krissy, is I was talking specifically like, here’s a thank you note. Thanks for your time. Thanks for speaking with me. But Chuck is more strategic thinking around you should absolutely follow up. And I, when I do a follow up, it’s like, hey, here’s a couple of it’s, again, it goes back to like, here’s some questions I had.

Matt Lewers: Hey you asked some digging questions here. I didn’t have quite the metrics to support, wanted to provide those as follow up. Or if you really wanna take it an extra step beyond if you’re interviewing for certain position and you’re gonna meet with different hiring profile managers of cross collaborator, crap collaborative individuals, right?

Matt Lewers: Like if you’ve got a personal friend or a personal connection that you know as a referral and you just met with like the head of C.S., But you’re interviewing for sales role, but you’ve got a head of CS referral say, Hey, great speaking with you today, Chuck. I actually have a referral that’s also head of CS, very similar to your background.

Matt Lewers: Feel free to reach out to them at any point during this interview cycle. I understand that you guys will probably do that at some stage. He or she knows to be expecting your call. Thanks again for your time. Like bring value to it or bring insight or extract value and insight from the note as opposed to just thank you for your time, which is where I am. Like I don’t even read ’em.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. I agree it,

Chuck Brotman: The only thing I’ll add though,

Krissy Manzano: Is it a red flag though? Is this a red flag? So if a, if I’m interviewing, and also, let me actually throw this at you. Is it a red flag if a junior candidate doesn’t do this, who maybe has no work experience, like straight out of college versus a candidate that has five plus years of experience?

Krissy Manzano: Does that matter?

Chuck Brotman: Yeah, it, we certainly have had some clients for whom I know, as a fact, if you did not send follow up, they would not continue with you.

Krissy Manzano: No. But is it a red flag?

Chuck Brotman: For some hiring leaders, it remains a red flag. Now, question being directed, do I think it ought to be one? No.

Krissy Manzano: Okay. That was my question.

Chuck Brotman: Yeah, I mean definitely it’s not, again, it’s just at a certain level, I think my general guidance to candidates, if you are excited on an opportunity or you excited at the prospects of pursuing an opportunity, send follow up.

Chuck Brotman: And I was gonna, I was gonna flip up a bit. I mean, look we can still call these thank you notes at a certain level, right? I mean, you wanna exp you should express gratitude out of the gates. I mean, there’s no reason to break precedent and having that structure, but I think, Matt, to your point, you know, it, you don’t have much else to say,

Chuck Brotman: It’s not necessarily gonna move the needle in a particular direction. But you should, if you’re excited, you should have, as you said, open questions, you an opportunity to recap next steps to share, something specifically that intrigues you or that got you more excited in the conversation itself.

Chuck Brotman: That’s nine times out of ten. Can I help you?

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, in kind of conclusion, in hearing both of you all say this and it’s getting my mind thinking, cuz I feel like I’ve kind of flip flop on it. Like I used to always be really big about it and then I was like, people need to get over themselves. And then I’m kind of back to it again.

Krissy Manzano: But I think really what it is the challenges that we see on the recruiting side is that there’s no standardized way on how people are hiring. Right? Which is what one of the things that we’re trying to change. And so some companies don’t care. and so, and then some companies do so for candidates, the message is confusing and I think that’s where people need to have a little bit of empathy.

Krissy Manzano: Like you could, it’s a good best practice for a candidate regardless of the company, but they can have had a lot of success at other companies where they never cared about that and they’re also busy with other things. And so what I’d say would be valuable if you were going to make that like a red flag go, no go, is you should tell the candidate that you care.

Krissy Manzano: Right. Or have the recruiter tell them like, Hey, thank you notes are important, like throughout this interview process as we go through it, just want you to be aware of that. That’s not giving someone a cheat sheet, right. That’s saying like, we transparently care about we care about these things.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. Like, and let me tell you, for our clients that have cared about that, I always told the candidates that, and there were candidates that didn’t follow through.

Krissy Manzano: Right. And that to me was telling that they can’t follow and implement instructions that were very clearly pointed out to them verbally and in written format. So, you know, all that to say, I think adding a little bit if you’re gonna, you know, be stringent on those things, don’t allow someone to guess in your brain what you’re stringent on.

Krissy Manzano: For something like that, you’re not, you know, taking away from who someone is, you know, interview the person, don’t interview for sociopaths. That’s where a lot of bad interview practices come to play. All right, well, that’s all the time we have today. Thank you for sharing your opinion, gentlemen. This was great.

Krissy Manzano: Until next time, we’ll see you later. Bye.

Chuck Brotman: Bye.