Some back story - I’ve been applying to jobs for about 3 months now. I’ve had 2 in person interviews and 3 phone interviews. Nothing has really come to fruition as of yet. I have some freelance gigs under my belt and a “normal 9-5” that has kept me and my family in good standing financially thus far.
A week ago I had an interview with a local company and even though I didn’t check all of the boxes (they had Ruby/C/.NET as ‘requirements’ on their job posting) I felt like the interview went very well.
The interviewer and I really meshed well, we were telling jokes, we were talking about the job as a whole and he seemed to really like my answers. He kept using phrases like “when you work here” and “when you start you’ll be over there” and he said my resume (particularly my cover letter) stood out to him and that’s why he asked me in.
He said “you’ll be our front end guy” and made mention of training me for back end coding as well “when I start” but it has been over a week and I haven’t heard anything yet.
I sent an e-mail 2 days after thanking them for the opportunity to interview and telling them what a great experience it was.
My question is do you all think I should reach out and ask what the status of the job is? Is it too soon? Will I seem pushy if I reach out first? Should I just wait?
If you don’t want to seem to be interested only to the job position… did you talk about something personal, so you can ask about how a project of them is going or inquire about a relative health you talked about or update them on a project of yours you talked about? Have you learned something new, have you improved greatly a project? Talk about that. It can be anything
And you can ask how long is the process after an interview usually like an afterthought, a post scriptum
I generally try to wait about a week between contact before reaching out again (aside from an initial “thank you, look forward to hearing from you soon” after the interview). I tend to avoid phrasing it as asking about the status of the job. I go for something along the line of “I just wanted to follow up on our conversation last week. I enjoyed the opportuninty to meet and I’m excited to move forward.”
We did talk about some personal things but the issue is the person I interviewed with is not the person that initially contacted me. I was contacted by an HR rep and interviewed with the IT lead so I only have the contact info for the HR rep and not the person I interviewed with.
Today makes 2 weeks since my interview and I haven’t heard anything yet so I’m assuming I didn’t get it
Do you think I should ask the HR rep for the e-mail of the person I interviewed with? Ultimately he is the one that decides who to hire so maybe it’s a good idea to speak directly to him?
I sent an initial follow up thanking them for the opportunity to interview but never received a response from that email either. I don’t want to come off as desperate but it’s been 2 weeks and I haven’t heard anything.
I thought for sure I’d hear something, even if it was a ‘Hey you didn’t get the job’ kind of email. I don’t have the contact info of the person I interviewed with so that complicates the situation as well lol
Contact the HR person and ask them for a status, they should know. I would not ask for the person directly if they didn’t give you that information. I’ve worked for places that take months and others that decided in days.
Tragically, the vast majority of employers do not contact you to say that you didn’t get the job.
On the other hand… this summer I was finally contacted about the follow-up (second or third level) interview from a job I interviewed for 10 months previously.
One self-defense strategy I’ve tried employing is to end the “any other questions” portion of a conversation with “Would you mind telling me what the process is, moving forward?” and “Do you have a rough timeline for when you expect to fill this position?”
Been there. Unfortunately, you also have no visibility into who or how many others may have been interviewed. I usually follow up which you did, wait a few days and see if the job is still posted. I then would send another email seeing “if there are any questions I could answer?” After that, the silence is usually deafening and my logic is that if they wanted me, they would definitely reach out when their time is right. If not, it wasn’t the gig for me.
As ArielLeslie suggested typically I would give it a week at most two since your last thank you letter to contact again.
However, in regards to the most recent follow up, I believe you may have been ghosted. It depends on the company. I would say if it’s a large company, months is common.
A small one? Days but this is not a rule.
Also something I learned rather quickly: never assume you got a job just because of a great interview. Keep applying after great interviews and develop a thick skin that what will get you far in the job search.
I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s what I’m learning and you have a support system here as a lot of us went through the same thing.
Sorry it has taken me so long to reply but the past few weeks have been crazy hectic. I finally got an e-mail back from the company after I reached out several times with no response.
I have heard horror stories about how companies treat developers in general but I never gave it much credence until I experienced it first hand.
The email I received back said “Jonathan, you didn’t make the cut.” and that was it.
I wanted to ask for some pointers or about what was it that knocked me out of the running but I figured I’d just cut my losses and leave it be. On to the next one!
Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply and for the suggestions.
