Hi folks.
It's great to see you again.
And if you are new to this channel, my name is Bill Benoist.
I'm a Certified Professional Career Coach here in Silicon Valley.
And in today's video, I want to talk about sending out the thank you note.
So, I want to talk about why it's important.
I'm going to give you some tips and strategies, and also the elements that you want to include
in a thank you note.
And at the end of the video, I'll even go over a sample email.
So, stick around to the end.
It's not going be a long video, but I think it's one that's going be really important.
And I want to start off with giving you some numbers as to why this thank you note is so
important to send.
A couple of years ago Top Resume, they did a survey.
They reached out and asked 358 hiring managers
this question: “After an interview, does receiving a thank you note from the candidate
in any way, influence your decision-making process?”
68% of hiring managers said it does.
Now.
Here's some even more, what I think is startling numbers.
Approximately one in five candidates or about 16% say they don't always send out a thank
you note.
And 7% said they never send out a thank you note.
So, you want to move to the top of the, uh, list really quickly, or at least not be on
the bottom.
Send out a thank you note after the job interview.
So, a couple of tips here, number one, if you're interviewing with multiple people,
you want to make sure that you're sending out a thank you note to each one of those
individuals and you want to customize it to their names.
So that means that you need to get their email, address, their name, try to ask them for a
business card, if they have one.
If they don't, make sure that you write their name down and their email address, because
again, this is really important.
Now they ask these same hiring managers, does it matter whether you receive an email, or
do you want it as a personalized letter or something else?
All of them said pretty much the same thing.
An email is absolutely fine.
In fact, the thing that was more important was the timing of the email.
They really wanted to see that thank you email within 24 hours.
And so, it's really kind of difficult to send a personalized note through the us postal
service with it taking three to five days.
So, you want to make sure that you get that email out.
Now here's my tip.
And that is send that thank you note in the evening hours like around eight or 9:00 PM.
Why?
Because if you send it the next day, you know, how around midday or two o'clock in the afternoon,
or even any time after 10:00 AM in the morning, your inbox just starts getting overwhelmed.
What you want to do is you want to be the first thing that that hiring manager sees
that next morning.
So, if you send it out at night, then likely that's going be the first email that sees,
and it's going just really create, I think, a better impression for you.
The other thing is you don't want to be writing a novel.
Um, so that leads me to coming into the elements that you want to include in this email.
First off, let's just talk about this subject.
You need to have a subject that identifies what the email is about and just make it,
you know, a personalized subject line.
Thank you for the interview, Bob.
I mean, something as simple as that, but is very personalized and just, you know, thank
you for the interview, Bob or Sally or John really is going stand out in that long list
of what could be, you know, somebody's, uh, inbox there.
Even if you're the first email in the inbox, that's going stand out very nicely.
Okay.
Then we're going move on to the greeting.
And you just want to make sure that it's a genuine greeting.
You know, something that just, you know, shows an upbeat and really this only needs to be
one or two sentences.
The third element is I want you to bring up something that was discussed during the interview,
and this is why you really kind of need to customize the thank you note, but I don't
want you again, we're going back to you don't want to have to write a novel or anything.
So, one to two sentences is fine with this, but you want to bring up something that was
discussed that just shows that you were paying attention during the interview.
And again, in a moment here, I'm going go over a sample.
Thank you note.
So, you can see exactly how this all falls into place.
The fourth element.
I want you to explain why you think you would be a good fit for this position.
And if you can tie this into the third element, which was bringing up something that was discussed
during the interview process, even all the better.
And then finally, the fifth element is a call to action, essentially, what are the next
steps?
And then just simply sign the email.
It's not going take you that long.
It, you know, you're, you're going need to think about it a little bit, because again,
this cannot be a template that you want to be using for every single job interview that
you have.
And in each one of these interviews, if it's with the same company, multiple interviews
that same day, you're probably going talk about something a little bit different, but
I do believe it's very important that everyone that you interview with receives a thank you
email.
So let me give you an example.
I typed one up here, but I want to give you an example of a thank you note.
And I just want to go over each one of these elements that we talked about.
So you notice that we start this off with just kind of a personalized, uh, subject line.
Thank you for the interview.
That's all we really need to do, but we want to make sure that this stands out in the inbox
as to what it is that you're writing.
And then I'm just personalizing this with the first element here, a genuine greeting.
Dear Jim, I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with you today regarding the program management
role within Intuit.
I found it especially interesting to learn more about your role as a senior program manager,
your team, and the current projects your team is working on.
So here, I mean actually even bringing up something that we talked about during the
interview process.
So now let's move on.
You mentioned needing someone who could develop training programs that could resolve critical
department needs a skill I'm quite proud of is my ability to create instructional presentations
using both Microsoft PowerPoint and apple keynote.
So, I'm going back to something again that was talked about during the interview process
and how I could actually add a contribution to the department with the skills that I have.
Okay.
Moving on.
I would welcome the opportunity to use my talents in this area to contribute to the
department and feel confident.
I would be a great addition to the team.
Now what I'm doing is essentially I'm validating that I do believe that I would be a great
asset to be hired there.
And then finally, I'm adding a call to action.
I look forward to hearing about the next steps in the interview process, sincerely Bill Benoist.
And then if you notice down here that I've also added a link to my LinkedIn profile and
also my phone number to make it, you know, much easier to, uh, reach out to me as well
as my email address, of course, as well.
So, let's just talk real briefly.
I'm going just put a plug in.
If you are having trouble with your LinkedIn profile, I do have a free master class on
my website and I'll put a link to it in the upper right-hand corner, as well as in the
note section below, uh, it's about an hour and a half long, completely free, 100% free.
It goes over not only the resume, but the LinkedIn in depth and even interviewing skills.
So definitely check that out.
If you're in career transition or you're looking for a new position.
So, I hope this video was informative and useful.
It's kind of a short one today, but one that I think needs to be talked about, especially
if you've been one that doesn't always send out thank you notes.
So, if you haven't already subscribed to this channel, make sure that you do so, hit the
bell notification.
As I do upload new career tips and strategies every Tuesday and hate for you to miss anything.
Thanks for stopping by.
And I look forward to seeing you next week.
Take care.