Following Up with Employers

Apr 06 2016

Following Up with Employers
Courtesy of “Olu Eletu” from unsplash.com

Being persistent with the employer is very important because it shows how much you care about the company and how much you want the position. It also helps you to get insights of the job in question. The more you talk, the more you get to know them.

Now, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be following them to the restaurants and coffee shops or stalk them to the end of time; being persistent means that you will give the right continuity to your job hunting. For example, if you apply to this job and then you finally receive a response either by e-mail or a call, you are expected to reply in the next twelve to twenty four hours maximum. Now, is possible that you are super busy in between jobs interviews and meetings, but that doesn’t give you the excuse of not sending even a short message to show that your interest still there, unless you lost it for some reason. And here we jumped into a mirror idea, if you don’t reply in the next following hours, it might be understood as if you don’t want the job anymore, or that you got a more suitable offer according to your expectations; therefore the employer will move on to the next candidate in line.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t sleep, eat or take a shower waiting for such e-mail or call; this means that you have to remember to be respectful at all costs, and being persistent is a matter of respect towards the employer (or any other person).

That being said let me give you some advices regarding the persistence.

Organize yourself:

When being persistent is not only about replying to the jobs, but also give a follow up letter. For example, if you already got an e-mail or call as we said before, and then you replied… but after a couple of days you don’t hear from them, you should contact them again. Accidents happen and your message may have been displayed or lost. Before contacting them, you should double check if your message went through, it also might had happened that your e-mail didn’t send, or that your phone is off… After you are sure that everything is and was functioning good, then you can establish some rules.

After the first contact, you should put in your agenda a ‘follow up action’ up to three days one week.

i.e. I write my cover letter on Monday first week, I get a positive email on Thursday to tell me that I’ll be contacted in the next few days, but I don’t hear from there since then, today is already Wednesday second week… I should be sending an e-mail already asking politely about a process update.

Now, keeping a clear agenda either electronic or digital is important. Remember to write some kind of description to each one of the titles, because you don’t want to mix up the information and confuse employer’s names, positions or jobs descriptions. Staying organized will also show up to the employer, believe it or not, is something that no matter how much people hide it, organization is almost a trait as part of your face.