A super simple yet highly effective trick helps you increase your chances after tech interviews and keeps you a little safer:
The follow-up email.
A thread. ↓
1. What is a follow-up email?
A follow-up email is basically an email you send after a meeting.
You should usually send it within a day after that meeting.
This email gives you a chance to:
- Summarize what you understood or talked about
- Pick up points that were left undiscussed
- Give answers you promised to or couldn't deliver
- Ask additional questions
- Show overall more interest in the process
You send this email to all participants of the meeting you previously attended, either virtually or physically.
Its purpose is to bring you back to attention and to show that you are really interested in the process you currently participate in.
2. Why is a follow-up email a good thing to do?
Especially when interviewing, you are usually only one candidate of many, and you talk about a lot in these interviews.
You answer many questions, you ask equally as many, and you talk about many things.
That's all a lot to grasp, and sometimes information gets lost. Either on your side or the other.
By summarizing at least the most important points how you understood them, you give our interviewers a chance to correct you.
They can jump in and correct misunderstandings, so you both have the same understanding.
And sometimes, you can't answer certain questions right in the interview. That's okay, and it happens.
This email is a great way for you to give the answers you still owe.
An additional effect of a follow-up email is that you proactively contact your interviewers again. You keep yourself relevant.
Writing this email takes some effort, and it shows that you are interested in the process. That's bonus points for you.
Not many candidates do this.
The last benefit of such an email is that it makes you a little safer.
It's not the norm, but many hiring managers and recruiters love to sell you how awesome their company is and how good it would be for you to work there.
Sadly, their "tongue sometimes slips."
Stated differently: They will tell you something in a way that doesn't reflect the actual reality.
By referencing those statements in your email and receiving positive confirmation, you have evidence of what you have been told.
You can then use this should you ever have to.
3. How should the email look?
It is up to you how you want to structure this email, but a structure that worked for me is the following:
1. Greeting 2. State you wanted to follow up 3. Summary of the most important points 4. Answers you promised to deliver 5. Further questions
And here is an example:
Hello Roberta,
thank you very much for the interesting interview we had yesterday. I enjoyed it a lot.
To follow up with the interview, I wanted to use this email as an opportunity to give you a quick summary of what I understood.
- Point A
-- You said
-- I said
-- You said
- Point B
-- etc
-- etc
- etc
Can you confirm that I got this correctly?
I also promised to deliver answers for the two questions I couldn't answer during the interview because I had to check my papers for them.
Regarding question 1: <rephrase question>
<answer>
Regarding question 2: <rephrase question>
<answer>
I would love to get your feedback on whether these answers are enough to clear this up.
And lastly, I have some further questions that arose after I had some time to think about our interview:
<Question1>
<Question2>
<Question3>
etc.
I'm looking forward to receiving your answers on these.
Feel free to contact me anytime should you have any further questions you would like to discuss.
Best regards,
Me
Writing this email should usually not take you more than half an hour, but its effect justifies this work.
Especially as you have to decide whether this company is for you, it's in your best interest to understand everything right.
This email helps you to achieve exactly this.
4. Thread end
That's it for this thread.
I hope you found something useful in it for you.
If you enjoyed reading this thread, consider dropping a like, retweet the first tweet, and follow me (@oliverjumpertz) for more content like this.
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Did you know that there is a strategy that can make you 100% more likely to achieve your goals?
It is simple, yet highly effective, and it works for software developers learning how to code, for starters in business, and martekers alike.
A thread. ↓
1. Most people set goals
We all have dreams and goals.
- Learning how to code
- Earning a million dollars in a year
- Starting a highly successful business
- Finding our dream partner
- Closing a million-dollar deal
- Getting the promotion we deserve
There are so many goals out there that we couldn't count them all, even if we wanted to.
It's great to have goals because they are our drive. They make us leave our comfort zone and explore the unknown to reach them.
For the last two weeks, I posted at least one thread every day about cracking your tech interview, marketing yourself, and growing as a software developer.
Here is a collection of the threads I published.
And there are many more to come in the future.
A thread. ↓
1. "Are there any questions left we can answer?"
This inconspicuous question is one of the most important ones in any interview.
This is where you can shine and make a lasting impression.