So You’re Waiting to Hear Back from an Interview?
This blog post was written by Peer Career Ambassador, Davele Zephyr (’19).
As the semester comes to an end, and the interview season is wrapping up for some industries, a lot of us enter into the agonizing period of …waiting. You remember the employer saying you’d hear from them “soon,” but how long is “soon?” Does “soon” equal a couple of days, weeks, months, next semester? Does the lack of contact mean they’re not interested? The thing is, you just don’t know and with that, you just have to…wait! Sometimes when we get a little too antsy about waiting we tend to want to do a few things, a few things that you will soon find out, don’t reflect the best on you. As explained by U.S. News and World Report, let’s get into what a few of those are.
Check in with your recruiter aggressively. Trust me, I get it. It is nerve-wracking to have to…wait. But learning how to control our nerves is key to our personal and professional development. Checking in too many times to the point where you are not receiving responses, yet continue to send emails/ make calls, paints you as aggressive and impatient. In doing so, you end up tainting the good impression you hopefully made during your interview. And you know what that means, a possible rejection.
Bluff by saying you have another offer when you really don’t. We all know that lying is wrong right? So, if you don’t actually have an offer from another company, don’t ruin your credibility by lying to the recruiter to say that you do in order to speed up their selection process. Remember, recruiters in the same industry talk to one another, especially at the college level, you would hate for your deceit to be a topic of discussion for them. Furthermore, sometimes when you rush the process by falsely claiming to have another offer, employers might reply by saying, “We can’t expedite things on our end and don’t want to prevent you from taking another offer, so we’ll remove you from consideration on our end.” That certainly didn’t go as planned right? So moral of the story, be honest!
Stop applying and interviewing for other jobs. No matter how well you believe the interview went, how superb your application was, or how much you think you deserve the job, never assume you have for sure secured that job. Several events out of your control may occur after your interview that may disqualify you from the job. For example, a better candidate emerged, there might be a hiring freeze, personal circumstances may force you to withdraw your application or even decline the offer. If such events occurred and you have no alternate options on the table, you are back to square one and will be at a disadvantage because the time you took to wait, will reveal missed opportunities. Remember you always want to be in a position where you have options to choose from.
Become inaccessible without giving the employer a heads up. As you know, in any sort of relationship or transaction, communication is key. So if you have plans such as a vacation, that will make you inaccessible for a period of time, you should make your interviewer aware. It would be terrible if, upon your return home, you see that you received an offer, but due to a lack of a response by the recruiter’s deadline, your offer was rescinded and the employer moved onto another candidate instead. Let’s not take that risk. I am sure you are familiar with the vacation automatic email response tool, that’s certainly something you can use to indicate your absence.
So as you continue to wait to hear back from employers this semester, keep the above points in mind. You will hear back in time to come. And if you have any questions related to this matter be sure to stop by CCD get some advice from an advisor or PCA. I wish you all the best!
Best Regards,
Davele Zephyr