Thank you letters?

Again with the Penthouse Forum shit?

 

I think you can find the answer to your questions in the answers that were posted while I made a, ahem, run for the border.

 

My mom would be so proud I'm even asking about thank you letters. It sounds like it is a resounding agreement that personal thank yous is the way to go.

A follow-up question (straight out of my journalism textbook) - keep the note short and sweet or try and sell myself one last time?

 

short and sweet. it looks desperate if you try to sell yourself. nothing you can say in a thank-you note will convince them to hire you.

 

I really don't think letter vs. e-mail is make-or-break in this category. Just remembering to say thanks is more than enough to set you apart, considering the great majority of applicants fail to do so.

Of course, I'm in a younger generation than most of you. So e-mail communication is perfectly acceptable to me in almost any circumstance.

 

just wonder if snail mailed thank-you cards postmarked in the city you interviewed in could be construed as trying too hard

not sure about this. if I were interviewing, I'd be fine with an email

 

[heavy breathing female] He was a strapping man, looked like he could bench 350 pounds with his pinky. Oh, what I wish he would have done to me with his winky.

 

[awkward silence]

 

Send a thank you card. Keep it real short and sincere. Remember the stamp.

This is coming from someone who has never ever sent a thank you card for anything else in his life. It works, I think. For one, it arrives a couple of days after the interview. That keeps your name in their heads and looks responsible on your part, even if you're not.

Doesn't make sense to send an email a couple of days later.

By the way, if you're really weighing the risk/reward for getting off your ass and mailing a card then maybe you don't deserve the job. Just do it and like it.

 

I've never mailed them before I left town from the interview. Not a bad idea, just never thought of it. Probably the best one was in 1989 when I mailed the notes the next day from home and the day after that, probably several days before the thank-you notes arrived, the SE called with the offer, which I accepted. I had included in my note to him an idea for a standing feature for the Sunday section and by the time I started work there, they had started it. I had considered that paper a bit out of my league (and in some ways I was right about that), and the idea was a last-ditch attempt to sell myself to them. That was unnecessary, as it turned out, but them using the idea was a nice boost for my confidence that I would use over the next few months to remind myself that I belonged there, despite some evidence to the contrary. So my advice is don't force a sales pitch in the thank-you note, but if you have something tangible to contribute, go for it.

 

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Solid Gold, Doctor.

 

Good point, White-brained, although I hope you are wrong and I do deserve the job. It isnt a matter of laziness or weighing risk/reward. I was just curious what the common and accepted practice was. I was practically handed my first job, so I never had to send a thank-you letter or email.

But it probably was a stupid question to begin with.

To take the stupid question a step further, how long do you wait to follow up with the SE? Is it like getting a girls' number - wait three days (that has never worked for me, by the way). Or should I just sit on my hands and wait for them to contact me?