Hi everyone.
I'm Andy LaCivita, founder of milewalk and the milewalk Academy and award-winning author
of The Hiring Prophecies.
On today's episode, we're going to talk about thanks and thank yous and how to write a thank
you that gets you hired.
Before we do that though, I want to give thanks to you.
The fact that you're following me, you're watching this at this very moment, I realize
that everybody competes for your attention, you have limited time, and the fact that you'd
spend some of it with me or following me or watching this or sharing this or whatever
it is that you've done to support me and my work over the years, I truly, truly appreciate
it.
I do it for you, I could never do it without you, and so I want you to know that I am grateful
and huge thank you to you.
I also want to congratulate you.
It may sound silly, but the fact that you are watching this means you're investing time
in your life and in your career, and you want to get better, and I want to help that, so
I really want to give you a shoutout for that.
Now today, we're going to talk about something that I think a lot of people struggle with,
at least I've noticed it with our job candidates and the candidates that I prepare for interviews
with employers, is what to do when you want to thank the employer after a job interview.
Now I noticed, or you probably have encountered, or have you ever experienced these challenges?
I think there are four of them.
How do I thank the employer?
When do I thank the employer?
What do I say?
What medium do I use?
Should I handwrite a card, or should I send an email, or do both?
Well, today I'm going to demystify all of that for you.
I'm going to teach you the two most important aspects related to any thank you.
I am also going to teach you the three benefits of thanking somebody.
There are actually three of them.
I'm not sure if you're aware of them, but there're three, and I'm also, I'm very geeked
up about this, I'm going to teach you exactly how to thank them as in the exact words to
use, so I have a free download that has some tips and instructions and the exact format
and language, so I hope you follow along.
I hope you download that.
I hope you use it.
I hope it's helpful.
I want to tell you a little bit about how this came about.
I am an executive recruiter.
For the last 12 years and even well before that, I've dedicated my life to helping people
just like you find their passions and their purpose in life so that they could lead rewarding
careers and fulfilled lives, and I'm doing that even more so now and trying to reach
out to more people so that I can impact them, and through doing this over the course of
my career as a recruiter, I've helped more than 11,000 people.
I've coached them in some way, shape, or form improving their career, and I've reached even
thousands and hundreds of thousands more through my blog and now through these videos and my
podcast, in how to really maximize the gifts you've been given and work efficiently so
that you can bring your gifts to the world and give the world what you were meant to
give this world.
In doing that, as part of that process, I've coached many thousands of people for many,
many thousands of interviews, and in that process, I've effectively perfected the thinking
process, at least based on what I've seen my clients react to and the hiring companies
and the success that the candidates that we prepare have had, and to give you an idea
of how successful these candidates have been just based on industry averages, our candidates
who have been prepared by us and have thanked employers in the manner that we recommend
have outperformed the market by 233%, and if you're wondering where a statistic like
that comes from, it's simply professional averages of how many job candidates an employer
has to interview in order to hire somebody, so we've measured our performance and our
candidates performance against that, and they're 233% better, and not all of that can be attributed
to the thanking process, but the thanking process is one element that I think really
can contribute that.
Let's dive in, those two important aspects I was talking about.
Any thank you that you give to anybody, especially an employer, has to have two things, speed
and thoughtfulness.
Speed is how quickly you respond after your interview.
I recommend 24 hours, and I realize that some of you might not be able to do that for various
reasons and scheduling issues, but trust me when I tell you, speed is extremely important.
Second thing that needs to accompany speed is thoughtfulness.
That's the care in the words that you put, the energy that you put into that thank you.
Was it thoughtful?
Was it meaningful to you to be able to express that gratitude for their time and their education
on their company and all the things that go along with that?
The other thing that you need to understand about these two elements is one without the
other typically renders your thankful meaningless from a benefit perspective.
Here's what I mean.
If you exit an interview, you walk down the street, and five minutes later, you type a
one line thank you email, that's fast, that's speedy, but there's not much thought into
it.
Employer probably gets that and thinks, he or she did that out of obligation as opposed
to really, genuinely taking the time and care to send me something meaningful.
On the other extreme, sending something four, five days later, it's thoughtful, but it's
ineffective because it's so slow.
They've already put you out of their mind.
A reminder four days later isn't really going to help your cause.
There's those two things, and I think you need to be aware of those, because every thank
you has to have an element of those two things.
Now I mentioned three, three benefits of writing a thank you.
The first one is you actually get to thank somebody, and there's benefit in that.
You are developing a connection.
You are developing a little bit of a bond with them thanking them for their time.
Thank you so much for your time.
I really enjoyed meeting you, and thank you for helping me better understand you and your
organization.
That's what I'm talking about.
That's the first element.
The second element ... Well actually, let me back up.
With that first element, if you think about thanking them, everybody's going to thank
them, so by thanking them, by sending them a thank you, you're effectively on par with
everybody else, because everybody's going to thank them, but the second element is where
I think you can really score your points.
The second element is where you get to talk about you.
You get to sell you.
You get to reinforce why you're the best candidate for the job.
You get to remind the employer.
This is where you talk about why you're the best match, why you'll be a fantastic fit,
so the second component of thanking somebody is, I would be a fantastic match because ... Then
talk about something that you and the employer or the job interviewer or job interviewers
talked about during your interview, and give them a reminder so that they could recollect
why you're such a great fit.
People love to be reassured that they're making good decisions.
Help them do that.
Give them a reminder.
One other thing you can do that is a really nice technique is if you didn't get a chance
to talk about something that is important that you think would add to your candidacy
is bring it up in the thank you.
It's a little bit of additive information, but the thing you want to make sure is you
realize in this section of the thank you, remember, what's so awesome about writing
a thank you, and especially this part of the thank you, is no one is asking you a question.
You get to totally own this portion of the thank you process, so own it!
You get to say whatever you want to say, so now you think through what you think would
be the best thing to remind the employer, and be specific in that middle section of
the thank you.
Remind them about how you would be a fantastic match.
Then the third element is you also get to sell yourself here a little bit by helping
the employer understand your level of enthusiasm, so give them some reassurance that you are
interested in the opportunity, so to close up your thank you, tell them, I want to let
you know after speaking with you, I'm much more interested in the opportunity because
... Then give them some valid reasons so that you're not just saying it, you're actually
giving them a rationale behind why this is great for you.
There are the three things that you essentially want to get into a thank you, thanking them
for their time, expressing why you'll be a fantastic match, that's your little sales
pitch, and then reassuring the employer that you're interested in the job.
Now how you want to do this and the format, I'd like to roll in a little story about me.
Last job that I had before I opened milewalk, I'd interviewed with a consulting company.
I went to the interview.
I interviewed with about eight or nine people, which was not all in one day.
After each one of the interviews, I sent them an email thank you that was just like the
content that I just mentioned, and then I also sent them each a handwritten card, and
I got the job.
I went to work there.
On the first day, I walked around the office, and I wanted to say hello to everybody.
I'm a sociable guy that way.
I wanted to say hello to everybody.
Say, "Hey, I'm really looking forward to working with you."
As I walked around the office, I noticed that everyone of them had the thank you card on
their desk, and I said to every one of them, "Oh my, I'm touched you kept my thank you
card."
They all said virtually the same thing.
They said, "Well, of course, it was so thoughtful, and what you wrote was so nice, and it was
touching, and honestly, I've never gotten one before, so it was kind of a big deal for
me."
Just keep that in mind.
What you might think is common sense isn't always common practice, so trust me when I
tell you that sending them something physical is really going to ... I think it helps, because
have to actually physically open something, I think that makes a difference, even if they
just pitched the card after you sent it, they'll remember that you sent it, and so it has value
there, and it was much more thoughtful, so I think I've got you a little ... What I like
to do ...
One other thing I'd like to add is when I write that email, and I send the email because
it's quick, and it gets to them right away, and then I add a little line at the bottom
that says, "By the way, I dropped a little card in the mail for you.
You should be getting it in a couple days."
Because I think that you want to have that speed so you want to send that email, but
you also want to follow up something even more thoughtful is that card.
Now we've talked about the dos.
Let's talk a little bit about the don'ts.
I've hit a couple of these already, so don't send a one liner.
It's fast but not thoughtful.
Don't send a one pager.
That's actually too long.
Don't solely send a card that'll get there too slowly, and whatever you do, don't forget
to proofread it a couple times.
Maybe even have somebody else proofread it if you're going to handwrite it especially,
but spellcheckers will only go so far.
You can have correctly spelled words that aren't the correct words that you want to
use, so you want to be really, really careful.
I hope you really enjoyed this.
If you liked this video, please share it.
One or two other things, there's a download in the show notes, whether you're looking
at this on the blog or watching it on YouTube or on my podcast, there's a download there
to a free thank you template.
It's got some tips and tricks that I mentioned today as well as the exact language that you
can use when thanking the employer, and if you want to go one better instead of just
a short little guide, I've written a whole book dedicated to interviewing well called
Interview Intervention: Communication That Gets You Hired.
I give it away free, an ebook, to anybody who subscribes to my blog, the Tips for Work
and Life.
I also have a book experience that I created that not only has that ebook, but also has
all the audio for all the chapters so you can hear me in your ear or listen to it on
your way home on the train or in traffic in the car, and if you go to the milewalk Academy,
it's milewalkacademy.com, and check out Interview Intervention.
Just click Learn More and get the free offer.
You'll have the audio, the ebook, the chapter notes, some guides, other great helpful things,
so I hope you enjoyed this, and until next week, have a great one.