How to Write a Thank You Email After a Job Interview?

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In this world of online job ads, mobile apps and social media networking, sending a thank you email to the recruiter or interviewer seems to be an old-fashioned idea.  If you think this way, then you are wrong. It still means a lot and is the crucial final step in a successful interview process. Experts suggest sending a well-written thank you email to each of your interviewers, as an acknowledgment of their time and effort. This shows that you are respectful of your interviewer’s time.

Here are some tips that will help you in writing a thank you email after the interview and explain all that you need to include in the same.

Send It within 24 Hours of the Interview

After you had your job interview, make sure to follow-up within 24 hours. It is always a good idea to send a follow-up letter or an email when the interviewer’s impression of you is still fresh in his/her mind. Recruiters nowadays have a habit of being persistent in their hiring campaigns, and thus conduct interviews every now and then. To ensure that your candidature is still going strong, send in your letter of gratitude through an email. Surely, this is something that will make you stand apart from rest of the candidates. 

Make it a Brief Wrap-Up of your Discussion

Without a doubt, you nailed the interview. Every element was kept into consideration and questions were answered in the most professional way possible. However, keep in mind that you need to mention all the points discussed during the interview. Go ahead and express how strong-a-fit you make for the job role and the organization as a whole.

Highlight your skills and remind the interviewer why they should hire you.

Give It a Personal Touch

Again, there’s no hard-and-fast rule when it comes to writing a thank you letter. It is your free will to give it a personal touch and customize the body according to the role requirements. If you think you forgot to cover anything or want to give a clarification about anything that can affect the employer’s decision, this might be your chance to put forth your viewpoint.

Remember, whatever you do, abstain from going overboard. Present your case in the politest way possible.

Keep it Short and Error Free

Keep your thank you email concise and to-the-point. Focus on blunt details/points and summarize your job suitability in an error-free way. Your thank you note will leave a final and lasting impression on the hiring manager. It is important to ensure that the email is well drafted and error-free. Re-read it multiple times. If possible, get it proofread by someone who has a good command of English to save yourself from making any irrevocable mistakes.

7 Keys to a Successful Interview After Being Fired

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Getting fired from a job almost always provokes mixed emotions; you may be shocked, dismayed if you were let go over an honest mistake, or alternately, relieved if you had been laboring under a superior with unrealistic expectations for months or years. No matter your specific situation you must face the same imminent hurdle as everyone else who’s ever been fired: Figuring out how to handle your next job interview. Interviewing after being fired is a delicate process, one wherein honesty, diplomacy, and professionalism must be precisely balanced.

If you’re struggling to understand how you ought to present yourself and your situation to a potential employer, the 7 job interview tips below should help you to develop successful post-termination interview tactics:

  1.  Deal with your emotions before tackling the interview.

It’s inevitable that the question of why you left your last job will come up during interviews, and if your emotions are still running hot, your answer is almost guaranteed to go over poorly. You may commit a major interview faux pas like speaking negatively about your former workplace, you may give the impression that you cannot think calmly under pressure, or you may make your work ethic look less than admirable.

As such, it’s vital to work through the emotions connected to being fired before you attempt a job interview. Talk to a friend or career counselor and don’t hold back feelings of shame, sadness, anger, etc. Work it out so that you can start your post-termination interviews with a clean slate, ready to discuss your dismissal with frankness and positivity.

  1.  Get your confidence back.

Being fired can leave deep wounds in a person’s self-esteem, even if the termination was unfair and the employee in question knows they didn’t really do anything terribly wrong. Alas, we can’t walk into job interviews with these scars showing; most interviewers decide who they will hire within just 3 minutes, largely based on how confident and professional that person seems. Things like assertive body language, eye contact, and action-oriented language make a huge difference during the interview process.

Prior to tackling an interview after you have been fired, you should, therefore, do something to rebuild your confidence: Volunteer, for example, or participate in a sport or hobby you excel at. Volunteering has the bonus of padding your resume so that your termination is not the most recent item on it.

  1.  Don’t speak ill of your former employer. 

Yes, this can be a challenge if he or she really did unfairly fire you, but it’s necessary to be polite and positive about your last boss no matter what he or she did. Speaking ill of your former employer will not show your interviewer that your dismissal was not your fault; it just makes you look unprofessional (and will likely make your interviewer concerned that you will speak badly of his or her company as well).

  1.  Don’t lie.

 While it’s important to frame the facts in as positive a light as possible, one should never outright lie about what occurred surrounding a termination. Research reveals that over 70 percent of interviewers can detect a lie immediately (whether expressed vocally or written into a resume), and most will absolutely refuse to hire anyone they catch trying to falsify the details of their work experience. Ergo, you should absolutely be honest about what happened—but refer to the point below for tips on how to candidly explain your termination.

  1.  Practice explaining your dismissal.

In interviews, semantics matter. While you should be direct when talking about what happened at your prior place of employment, there’s a world of difference between saying “I was let go because they gave me too much work to do and I couldn’t handle it,” and saying, “After my colleague left, my boss added her workload to mine, and I struggled to keep up. However, I learned the importance of being extremely organized from that experience and have since developed better time-management skills.” The latter response adds context to the situation without speaking negatively about the interviewee’s prior workplace. It also shows that the interviewee has thought carefully about his or her role in the termination and is serious about doing better.

  1.  Take responsibility.

Another important aspect of the response above is that the interviewee does not try to avoid taking the blame for being dismissed—even though the situation was somewhat unfair. He or she is willing to look at his or her mistakes honestly, own up to them, and learn from them, which conveys an image of maturity and professionalism.

Remember, your prospective employer isn’t looking for perfection; he or she is looking for accountability and problem-solving skills, so if you show said traits, you should be able to make a graceful recovery from your termination.

  1.  Be positive, then bring things back to the present.

Above all else, once you have respectfully answered your interviewer’s question about why you left your last job, it’s important to steer the conversation in a positive direction and bring the focus back to the present. The less time you spend talking about your termination, the less of a lasting impression it will make, and rightly so—being fired is an unfortunate occurrence, but it’s not who you are.

Now that you understand how to interview successfully after being fired are you ready to get back into the job search and start interviewing?  If so, take a look at our open positions and see if they might be the perfect job for you. We conduct open interviews daily at all of our locations.  

 

 

How to Ask Interview Questions

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As you begin searching for great employees to join your team or company, you need to think about the interviews you have to conduct. While knowing the right and wrong questions to ask is important, it’s also important to know how to ask those questions. Interview questions can be misleading, misinterpreted, and you give candidates false hope if you aren’t careful.

While in an interview, you as an employer need to pay special attention to your body language, word choice, and even your tone when asking questions. To help you out, here are five tips on asking interview questions:

1. Pay Attention to Tone

You’re probably a really busy person. You need to fill the position quickly. Maybe you get straight to the point with your questions. Maybe you ask broad questions. No matter what questions you’re asking, you need to pay attention to the tone you’re using when asking them. If you ask them quickly or passively, a candidate could get the impression that you don’t care about them or filling the job. Remember, you’re making a first impression with each candidate, so it’s important that you have a professional tone during the interview.

2. Prepare Your Questions

One of the worst things you can do for the candidate’s experience is to not be prepared. Avoiding this requires not only having questions ready for candidates, but reviewing their resumes and cover letters so that you can ask more specific and targeted questions. Remember, you’re trying to figure out if this person can do the job and also fit in with your company culture.

3. Have a Conversation

Since you’re trying to get to know candidates, it helps to have a conversation during the interview. While there is specific information you need to learn from the interview, it allows them to talk about their experiences, passions, and their ideal job and work setting. Having a more natural conversation with candidates will help them be more relaxed and willing to answer all of your questions.

4. Listen and Respond

While a conversation is a key element to every successful interview, you also need to make sure you are listening to what candidates are saying and respond to that. You have prepared questions, but you also need to ask follow-up questions to bounce off what the candidates are saying. Your interview may end up going a different way than you expected, but that can be a really great thing because you could end up finding the perfect candidate. Listening to candidates will help you learn about them and their experiences as employees.

5. Be Honest

During your interview, it may be tempting to talking about only the exciting or fascinating aspects of the position, but you need to be upfront and honest about everything the position entails. It can turn off recent hires if you tell them one thing during an interview and expect something completely different from them as an employee. Be honest with your expectations and be honest with the job requirements. Remember, you could be talking to someone you are going to hire and work with.

Do you have any tips on asking interview questions? How do you handle interviews? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!

The Interview Process

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Making hiring decisions can cause a lot of stress for anyone. Whether you’re a seasoned hiring manager or an owner of a small business looking to expand, hiring the right employee should take time and consideration. One of the best ways to make the process of hiring someone less stressful is to have an established interview process.

Continue reading “The Interview Process” →

The Right Interview Questions

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You probably have a huge stack of resumes and cover letters sitting on your desk. Or maybe they are sitting in your inbox. Either way, you are dreading reading them all. Even after carefully reading them and selecting a candidate, you could end up with an employee who turns out to not be what you thought.

While things like resumes and cover letters are certainly helpful in finding candidates, it’s important to focus on the interview. You can’t replace things like first impressions, responses to questions, and dealing with the stress of an interview with the information in resumes and cover letters. However, if you aren’t asking the right questions in the interview, you could still end up hiring someone you think is a great fit, but turns out to not be what you were looking for. Here are a few questions you should be asking in an interview:

1.  Can you tell me about a challenging work situation you experienced and what the situation resulted in?

By asking this question to candidates, you are going to learn how they handle stress and how they perceive results. You should be looking for honest answers, but also answers that have positive results. Candidates should be trying to show you that they work through issues and strive for positive results.

2. Why do you want to work here?

“It seems like a fun work environment.” “I really like the way the company is structured.” “Your brand is really great.” These are typical responses that don’t really carry any meaning. If a candidate gives you an answer like these, you’ll be able to tell they haven’t done much research. Look for specific answers about your company and show that thought and time was put into preparing for the interview.

3. What would you do differently, if you were to start your career over?

The ideal candidate would say nothing and are happy that their career path has lead them to you. But, we don’t live in an ideal world, so you should be looking for answers that focus on, growth, learning, and positive actions. You want a candidate who can recognize mistakes and is willing to make the necessary corrections to get back on track.

4. Where would you like to be in 5 years, career wise?

Sure, it may be a stereotypical question, but it’s an important one to ask. Interviewers sometimes avoid it because of overuse, but it serves a great purpose. You are looking for employees that are going to be dedicated to your organization and want to work for you. By asking this particular question, you can find out the goals of the candidate and if they match those of your company.

5. What type of work environment do you function best in?

As the one interviewing, you should have a handle on the work environment this candidate will be in. Is it fast? Hectic? Slow? Quiet? Once you are able to answer this question for yourself, you can ask candidates what type of work environment they work best in to ensure the two match. Employees who don’t fit with their work environments tend to be unhappy, stressed, and seek out other opportunities.

When it’s all said and done, you need to be asking interview questions that get to the heart of the situation: does this employee fit. Your questions should be tailored to your organization, the requirements of the position, and your overall goals.

Having trouble finding, interviewing, or qualifying candidates? We can help you!