I’ll probably get a lot of downvotes for this, but why exactly should I send a thank-you email?
What about the potential employer – why don’t they send one to me? I took the time to prepare my application, sent them all my documents, and showed up for the interview.
I’m not begging for a job – I’m applying for one. They’re looking for someone who will generate more value for the company than they’ll pay in salary. That’s a business transaction, not charity.
So again – why should I be the one to send a thank-you email?
Personally, I think it’s enough to thank them in person during the interview.
Downvoting you specifically for saying you’ll get downvotes for expressing a rational thought in response to a linkedinlunatic post. How dare you.
But also you’re right, bullshit tests should be called out as bullshit and employers should be shamed for pulling stupid shit like this. This is a business transaction where I’m selling you my time and skills for less than their worth so you can exploit that for a profit. You(the employer) should be fucking thanking me.
False! They all exist in a complex system of gravitational pull where all bodies, not just these two, have differing degrees of influence on each other dictated by distance and mass!
I was taught that the point of a thank you note is to get your name in front of them one more time. It’s a form of advertising; they might have done 5 interviews that day, 5 the previous day, and have 5 more scheduled for tomorrow. You want them to remember you over the next person who has the same qualifications.
Also a final opportunity to emphasize anything that went well in the interview, or downplay/explain anything that didn’t.
Anyone who’s judgementally dismissing applicants for not sending a thank you is an asshole, but this does not change the fact that sending a thank you is a good idea if you actually want to get the job.
When I was a hiring I never wanted anyone to show subservience or beg. But I didn’t want to lose my own job for making a poor decision, and if I interview 30 people in a week, I am more likely to remember and think more about people who make extra effort, which can look like a lot of things.
If I have a tough decision to make, unfortunately it does come down to a contest of who wants it most. At least I know if someone really wants the job they’re less likely to slack off and jeopardize my position.
The more you beg for the job, the more it signals to a prospective employer that you need it and don’t have alternatives. That means they can string you out much easier.
It’s often far less malicious. People don’t get positions of mediocre responsibility because they’re evil. Usually they’re just mid managers who need more help and want to pick people who actually want to work, and their own job rides on making a good decision.
Because ya’ll, you would be astonished how many shitty people show up for shitty interviews.
They tell us to do it in Canada too. But seriously, if you hiring me depends on me sending a mail to kiss your ass, fuck off, I take back my application.
When I was growing up in the US in the '80s and ‘90s, our business classes did tell us it was proper send a thank-you letter a couple of days after an interview. This was, of course, in the days before email and workers’ rights got even more abysmal in the US. Not sure if this one data point helps.
That being said, I’ve interviewed dozens, if not hundreds, of candidates, and have received thank-you notes from a handful of them. These notes are not part of the rubric used to evaluate them for the role. They also tend to come from weaker performers, so if anything, such a note is a red flag.
Exactly this! Additionally I cannot think of a single person I’ve interviewed who hasn’t said thanks at the end of the actual interview. How big a lunatic must this guy be to be SO out of touch with reality on this one?
It is an older American thing. IMO if Im hiring someone for a non-retail sales gig it can be a nice way to demonstrate your manners which are important in customer facing roles.
I’ve been looking for work lately and getting told the same thing by the employment offices around me (job search assistance).
It feels so bizarre and pushy to email back after an application/interview. I showed up and did my part, the balls in their court now, I’m just waiting for a response. To reach out again seems like I’m leaning over their shoulder and asking ‘have you made a decision yet??? How about now, can I have a job now?’
They already know what I want, what I can offer, and how to reach me. What more do they need?
There’s a completely transactional reason for post-interview “thank you” notes, whether you’re applying to college or for a job. It’s to remind the person, who’s probably interviewing a lot of applicants, of your existence and your qualifications. A good one includes a reminder of any parts where you think you shone. And if there’s something you thought of later, it’s okay to add that.
If their ego makes them take your thanks as sincere sucking up, fine. But you really do it for yourself, and the “thank you” is pro forma.
Of course this assumes you still want the position after having sat the interview. If not, feel free to ghost.
I usually get the thank you when they want to bring me to the next round of the hiring process. Maybe the thank you acts as a kind of signal that a party is interested in keeping the process moving? I’m sending a follow-up email if I’m eager to keep things moving (and it’s not simply “thank you for the interview;” I’m including a couple brief points reiterating why I think I’m a good fit). If I’m ambivalent or not interested I wouldn’t put the effort in.
This is how I’ve always understood them. If after you’ve had some time to digest how the interview went (and evaluate, based on the questions you (should have) asked during the interview, whether you think the position is a good fit for you) you still want the job, you send a quick email basically saying “Hey, thanks for meeting with me - it was nice to meet you / your team. Based on our interaction, it looks like this position would be a great fit for me / I’d be a great fit for it - here’s some things I took away from it (which also serves to show I was attentive / not just going through the motions) - looking forward to hearing from you to continue the process!” To your point, it’s not an ass-kissing email, the ‘thank you’ portion is just a polite formality to open the conversation.
Because even if you do everything right, if I’m struggling to find a candidate because my own ass is riding on it and I talked to 30 people in a week, I might be more likely to remember someone who makes an extra effort over someone I just saw or heard from once. It’s not about me the hiring manager, it’s about who you’re competing against for that position and specifically how many are competing against you.
It’s not rocket science, it’s not fun, but if you’re serious about getting a job, it can help.
Honestly I’m constantly taken back by how hateful and bitter people are at the things you just need to do to get ahead in the world. You can raise very valid points that our system, our capitalist hellscape we all share makes us feel like tools, but we still gotta eat and pay our bills. How serious you are about getting those bills paid is entirely up to you.
The alternative is to embrace a victim-identity, and ask yourself if you really wanna be that.
I trend to agree with you. The world is messed up, interviews aren’t supposed to be fair to you, and you’re probably competing with dozens of people.
No matter how good you are, and if you tick all the employers boxes (which may be unfair in itself and takes quite some luck to do), that’s not enough. What is enough is that you’re the best candidate among dozens of qualified people, according to the subjective criteria of this particular interviewer, and you have no clue what to do to get there. So random gestures may take you over the line, as well as they may not.
it’s been my position for a while now that job interviews evaluate, more than anything, how much the candidate is willing to humiliate themselves for the employer. that’s more important to employers than actual skill
It’s not functioning as a thank you, it’s honestly just an indication that you’re willing to take an extra 5 minutes to do something when the stakes are high.
If you really want the job, how you treat that conversation might be similar to how you treat a client once you’re hired. If you don’t really want the job, or you really don’t want to send a thank you, that’s fine, but with 5 applicants to choose from, wouldn’t they opt for the candidate who put in the best/most work?
I’m not saying it isn’t annoying and transactional and a lot to ask, but as someone who’s applied for hundreds of jobs, the reason to do it still feels clear.
It’s also a simple signal that you are still interested in the job. You’d certainly never send one of you weren’t. From the hirer’s perspective, it makes their job easier by not calling someone and having them turn it down.
This assumes that a hiring manager would choose not to call a favored candidate just because they didn’t get a thank you. That would be insane to me. None of my top performers sent me thank yous, and if I passed on them for that reason alone, I would deserve the dregs who would take their place.
I’ll probably get a lot of downvotes for this, but
I’m like 50/50 on this part being sarcasm, it doesn’t read like that to me at all but it’s also hard for me to picture expecting disagreement with a linkedin headcase to be an unpopular opinion anywhere outside of linkedin.
I neither engage in it as an applicant nor value it as a hiring manager. It would be difficult to assess if this has hampered my career, but I am doing fine.
It’s probably different for lawyers since they tend to work in firms and work as peers (partners) instead of just being regular employees. Even so, I would assume a “thank you” email would still not be expected, but perhaps a follow-up to ask about the status if there’s no response after a couple days.
If you are looking for the job it’s a good opportunity to emphasize your qualifications for the position based on what was interviewed on.
It’s also an opportunity to ask followup questions with the benefit of time and the ability to research.
I usually give them after interviews. I only get them when some kind of decision was made on the employer end.
It sounds like you may just have been in better positions in life when applying for jobs than others, such as myself. As hard as it is to get infront of anyone for work, I’ll take the extra 30~40 minutes it takes to write a follow up.
Your “Thank You” email should be used by you to put some of the points you hit on in the interview in writing to remind the company why they should hire you. Don’t think of it as gratitude. “Thanks for the opportunity to get to know the company. As I mentioned in the interview, I think I’d be a great fit because … blah blah blah.”
If it’s a business transaction to you, you have to market yourself if you want to be picked over someone else. Do I buy one of the robots that just showed up and told me their specs, or do I buy the one that has a little extra pizzazz for the same price?
It’s not a shopping cart test. There’s no social cost to not getting a thank you email, and the candidate likely already provided thanks verbally. It’s redundancy, and as a hiring manager I do not care for it.
For shopping carts, I even take back those that are not mine if they are nearby.
There’s no social cost if you abandon your shopping cart. That’s why they use that as a test.
Hey. I get you don’t like them. That’s totally okay. I consider them pointless, personally. But it’s more than my own preference or else it would be false consensus.
But it’s like spelling: if you keep pluralizing ‘mail’ with an S, or using a comma for a period, no one who also doesn’t know better is gonna notice. The time when you will need proper spelling or etiquette – or smoke detectors or seatbelts, for that matter – will be when you least expect it.
There is a social cost to abandoning your shopping cart; it’s just not borne by the abandoner. Carts left in the parking lot can block parking spots or damage cars if moved by wind or gravity. Additionally, if no one returns their cart, there will be none available at the storefront for use by the next customer. That’s part of the “test” as I understand it - there’s no one grading you individually on whether you fulfill your communal responsibility to return the cart, but that doesn’t mean there’s no impact from your failure to do so.
Feels like we might be talking past each other or conceptualizing the shopping cart theory differently?
As a hiring manager, how many times have you picked a candidate, called them, and they’ve decided against being hired by you? That’s you, having to go look for a shopping cart. Of course anyone who is going to write the note also said thanks in person. But if they write to remind you of the good points in their interview, maybe address some omission, you know they didn’t thank you to your face but mock you in private.
If someone gets an offer that meets their needs better (pay, interest, whatever), I just go to the next viable candidate from my pool. That’s hardly an imposition or a personal slight, and the potential for this to occur doesn’t change any of my behavior when hiring (other than, perhaps, trying to make a quicker offer for highly-talented candidates so I don’t lose them to a different opportunity).
I’ll probably get a lot of downvotes for this, but why exactly should I send a thank-you email?
What about the potential employer – why don’t they send one to me? I took the time to prepare my application, sent them all my documents, and showed up for the interview.
I’m not begging for a job – I’m applying for one. They’re looking for someone who will generate more value for the company than they’ll pay in salary. That’s a business transaction, not charity.
So again – why should I be the one to send a thank-you email?
Personally, I think it’s enough to thank them in person during the interview.
Downvoting you specifically for saying you’ll get downvotes for expressing a rational thought in response to a linkedinlunatic post. How dare you.
But also you’re right, bullshit tests should be called out as bullshit and employers should be shamed for pulling stupid shit like this. This is a business transaction where I’m selling you my time and skills for less than their worth so you can exploit that for a profit. You(the employer) should be fucking thanking me.
Why would you get downvoted in a community called LinkedIn Lunatics where we are expressly making fun of the content of the post?
I’ll probably get down voted for this opinion, but the earth is round and orbits the sun.
False! The Earth and Sun orbit the center of gravity between the two of them!
deleted by creator
False! They all exist in a complex system of gravitational pull where all bodies, not just these two, have differing degrees of influence on each other dictated by distance and mass!
The barycenter of the earth-sun orbit is within the surface of the sun, therefore the earth is understood to orbit the sun.
The JUPITER-Sun orbit barycenter, however, is outside the surface of the sun.
I liek spec
False!
You forgot to prefix your comment with “False!”.
I was taught that the point of a thank you note is to get your name in front of them one more time. It’s a form of advertising; they might have done 5 interviews that day, 5 the previous day, and have 5 more scheduled for tomorrow. You want them to remember you over the next person who has the same qualifications.
Also a final opportunity to emphasize anything that went well in the interview, or downplay/explain anything that didn’t.
Anyone who’s judgementally dismissing applicants for not sending a thank you is an asshole, but this does not change the fact that sending a thank you is a good idea if you actually want to get the job.
Commenting just to get my name out there.
You’re hired.
But they want you to beg.
When I was a hiring I never wanted anyone to show subservience or beg. But I didn’t want to lose my own job for making a poor decision, and if I interview 30 people in a week, I am more likely to remember and think more about people who make extra effort, which can look like a lot of things.
If I have a tough decision to make, unfortunately it does come down to a contest of who wants it most. At least I know if someone really wants the job they’re less likely to slack off and jeopardize my position.
The more you beg for the job, the more it signals to a prospective employer that you need it and don’t have alternatives. That means they can string you out much easier.
Desperation facilitates exploitation.
It’s often far less malicious. People don’t get positions of mediocre responsibility because they’re evil. Usually they’re just mid managers who need more help and want to pick people who actually want to work, and their own job rides on making a good decision.
Because ya’ll, you would be astonished how many shitty people show up for shitty interviews.
100%. I’ve never heard of this practise - maybe it’s an American thing?
They tell us to do it in Canada too. But seriously, if you hiring me depends on me sending a mail to kiss your ass, fuck off, I take back my application.
God I love society programming humans to be ok with corporate subjugation of our species.
When I was growing up in the US in the '80s and ‘90s, our business classes did tell us it was proper send a thank-you letter a couple of days after an interview. This was, of course, in the days before email and workers’ rights got even more abysmal in the US. Not sure if this one data point helps.
No, it’s not.
That being said, I’ve interviewed dozens, if not hundreds, of candidates, and have received thank-you notes from a handful of them. These notes are not part of the rubric used to evaluate them for the role. They also tend to come from weaker performers, so if anything, such a note is a red flag.
Exactly this! Additionally I cannot think of a single person I’ve interviewed who hasn’t said thanks at the end of the actual interview. How big a lunatic must this guy be to be SO out of touch with reality on this one?
he runs his aspect of the business as a tiny fascist dictatorship. he wants yesmen, not actual applicants
It is an older American thing. IMO if Im hiring someone for a non-retail sales gig it can be a nice way to demonstrate your manners which are important in customer facing roles.
you are in the wrong sub, lunatic
It is.
I honestly use it as a passive aggressive “hey it’s been a week and I haven’t heard from you, am I still being considered.” email.
It’s perfect for that. Also, “did you lose my fucking email, you incompetent boob? Here it is again.” but couched as politeness.
Most upvoted comment I’ve seen on Lemmy in a while
deleted by creator
I’ve been looking for work lately and getting told the same thing by the employment offices around me (job search assistance).
It feels so bizarre and pushy to email back after an application/interview. I showed up and did my part, the balls in their court now, I’m just waiting for a response. To reach out again seems like I’m leaning over their shoulder and asking ‘have you made a decision yet??? How about now, can I have a job now?’
They already know what I want, what I can offer, and how to reach me. What more do they need?
Not even close to being wrong. No thank you is needed. Honestly I see no reason to thank them at the end of the interview.
And no down votes from normal people, this is absolutely an insane person posting this.
There’s a completely transactional reason for post-interview “thank you” notes, whether you’re applying to college or for a job. It’s to remind the person, who’s probably interviewing a lot of applicants, of your existence and your qualifications. A good one includes a reminder of any parts where you think you shone. And if there’s something you thought of later, it’s okay to add that.
If their ego makes them take your thanks as sincere sucking up, fine. But you really do it for yourself, and the “thank you” is pro forma.
Of course this assumes you still want the position after having sat the interview. If not, feel free to ghost.
I usually get the thank you when they want to bring me to the next round of the hiring process. Maybe the thank you acts as a kind of signal that a party is interested in keeping the process moving? I’m sending a follow-up email if I’m eager to keep things moving (and it’s not simply “thank you for the interview;” I’m including a couple brief points reiterating why I think I’m a good fit). If I’m ambivalent or not interested I wouldn’t put the effort in.
This is how I’ve always understood them. If after you’ve had some time to digest how the interview went (and evaluate, based on the questions you (should have) asked during the interview, whether you think the position is a good fit for you) you still want the job, you send a quick email basically saying “Hey, thanks for meeting with me - it was nice to meet you / your team. Based on our interaction, it looks like this position would be a great fit for me / I’d be a great fit for it - here’s some things I took away from it (which also serves to show I was attentive / not just going through the motions) - looking forward to hearing from you to continue the process!” To your point, it’s not an ass-kissing email, the ‘thank you’ portion is just a polite formality to open the conversation.
Because even if you do everything right, if I’m struggling to find a candidate because my own ass is riding on it and I talked to 30 people in a week, I might be more likely to remember someone who makes an extra effort over someone I just saw or heard from once. It’s not about me the hiring manager, it’s about who you’re competing against for that position and specifically how many are competing against you.
It’s not rocket science, it’s not fun, but if you’re serious about getting a job, it can help.
Honestly I’m constantly taken back by how hateful and bitter people are at the things you just need to do to get ahead in the world. You can raise very valid points that our system, our capitalist hellscape we all share makes us feel like tools, but we still gotta eat and pay our bills. How serious you are about getting those bills paid is entirely up to you.
The alternative is to embrace a victim-identity, and ask yourself if you really wanna be that.
I trend to agree with you. The world is messed up, interviews aren’t supposed to be fair to you, and you’re probably competing with dozens of people.
No matter how good you are, and if you tick all the employers boxes (which may be unfair in itself and takes quite some luck to do), that’s not enough. What is enough is that you’re the best candidate among dozens of qualified people, according to the subjective criteria of this particular interviewer, and you have no clue what to do to get there. So random gestures may take you over the line, as well as they may not.
it’s been my position for a while now that job interviews evaluate, more than anything, how much the candidate is willing to humiliate themselves for the employer. that’s more important to employers than actual skill
It’s not functioning as a thank you, it’s honestly just an indication that you’re willing to take an extra 5 minutes to do something when the stakes are high.
If you really want the job, how you treat that conversation might be similar to how you treat a client once you’re hired. If you don’t really want the job, or you really don’t want to send a thank you, that’s fine, but with 5 applicants to choose from, wouldn’t they opt for the candidate who put in the best/most work?
I’m not saying it isn’t annoying and transactional and a lot to ask, but as someone who’s applied for hundreds of jobs, the reason to do it still feels clear.
It’s also a simple signal that you are still interested in the job. You’d certainly never send one of you weren’t. From the hirer’s perspective, it makes their job easier by not calling someone and having them turn it down.
This assumes that a hiring manager would choose not to call a favored candidate just because they didn’t get a thank you. That would be insane to me. None of my top performers sent me thank yous, and if I passed on them for that reason alone, I would deserve the dregs who would take their place.
I’m like 50/50 on this part being sarcasm, it doesn’t read like that to me at all but it’s also hard for me to picture expecting disagreement with a linkedin headcase to be an unpopular opinion anywhere outside of linkedin.
I neither engage in it as an applicant nor value it as a hiring manager. It would be difficult to assess if this has hampered my career, but I am doing fine.
Because keeping the line of communication open is good. You’re one of dozens of applicants, so you want them to focus on you.
It’s probably different for lawyers since they tend to work in firms and work as peers (partners) instead of just being regular employees. Even so, I would assume a “thank you” email would still not be expected, but perhaps a follow-up to ask about the status if there’s no response after a couple days.
If you are looking for the job it’s a good opportunity to emphasize your qualifications for the position based on what was interviewed on. It’s also an opportunity to ask followup questions with the benefit of time and the ability to research.
I usually give them after interviews. I only get them when some kind of decision was made on the employer end.
It sounds like you may just have been in better positions in life when applying for jobs than others, such as myself. As hard as it is to get infront of anyone for work, I’ll take the extra 30~40 minutes it takes to write a follow up.
Your “Thank You” email should be used by you to put some of the points you hit on in the interview in writing to remind the company why they should hire you. Don’t think of it as gratitude. “Thanks for the opportunity to get to know the company. As I mentioned in the interview, I think I’d be a great fit because … blah blah blah.”
If it’s a business transaction to you, you have to market yourself if you want to be picked over someone else. Do I buy one of the robots that just showed up and told me their specs, or do I buy the one that has a little extra pizzazz for the same price?
It’s a shopping-cart test.
It’s not a shopping cart test. There’s no social cost to not getting a thank you email, and the candidate likely already provided thanks verbally. It’s redundancy, and as a hiring manager I do not care for it.
For shopping carts, I even take back those that are not mine if they are nearby.
There’s no social cost if you abandon your shopping cart. That’s why they use that as a test.
Hey. I get you don’t like them. That’s totally okay. I consider them pointless, personally. But it’s more than my own preference or else it would be false consensus.
But it’s like spelling: if you keep pluralizing ‘mail’ with an S, or using a comma for a period, no one who also doesn’t know better is gonna notice. The time when you will need proper spelling or etiquette – or smoke detectors or seatbelts, for that matter – will be when you least expect it.
There is a social cost to abandoning your shopping cart; it’s just not borne by the abandoner. Carts left in the parking lot can block parking spots or damage cars if moved by wind or gravity. Additionally, if no one returns their cart, there will be none available at the storefront for use by the next customer. That’s part of the “test” as I understand it - there’s no one grading you individually on whether you fulfill your communal responsibility to return the cart, but that doesn’t mean there’s no impact from your failure to do so.
Feels like we might be talking past each other or conceptualizing the shopping cart theory differently?
As a hiring manager, how many times have you picked a candidate, called them, and they’ve decided against being hired by you? That’s you, having to go look for a shopping cart. Of course anyone who is going to write the note also said thanks in person. But if they write to remind you of the good points in their interview, maybe address some omission, you know they didn’t thank you to your face but mock you in private.
This comment belongs in its own post
If someone gets an offer that meets their needs better (pay, interest, whatever), I just go to the next viable candidate from my pool. That’s hardly an imposition or a personal slight, and the potential for this to occur doesn’t change any of my behavior when hiring (other than, perhaps, trying to make a quicker offer for highly-talented candidates so I don’t lose them to a different opportunity).
Fuck bullshit tests
Yu are thanking them for considering you for the job.