Thank you notes should be emailed or handwritten to all employers with whom you have had contact, especially during OCI. They should be emailed or mailed or emailed within 24 hours of your interview. A thank you letter indicates that you are interested in the employer, and they may help influence the employer’s continued interest in you during their screening process. It is also a way of maintaining contact with the interviewer following the interview—even if you don’t get the job!
A few guidelines on thank you’s:
- Make every effort not wait longer than 48 hours to send a thank you letter. BUT don’t send them ten seconds after the interview ended. It looks like you canned them in advance.
- If it seems logical, you may send one thank you letter or email to your contact at an employer Err on the side of sending after interviewing with several members of the organization during OCI. Admittedly, it can be hard to make individual thank you notes unique if you interviewed with small groups of attorneys. While they shouldn’t be identical or copied and pasted completely, some thank you notes will obviously be similar. Just do your best to individualize them. Attorneys may actually compare thank you notes with one another.
- In any event, be sure to thank everyone who 1) came to campus and 2) with whom you had substantive conversation and who was part of the interview process. As one attorney who came to interview this fall explained: “One general piece of advice that I would share with students—if you are going to send “thank you” notes after on campus interviews, make sure to send them to all the interviewers. It can be as a group, or individually, but picking and choosing who to thank, and leaving one or more attorneys out sends a bad impression. As always, you never know who is making the hiring decisions, and more likely than not, if an attorney is doing an interview, he or she has a say in the hiring decision.”
- The notes should be brief and sincere.
- In general, use formal titles to address the interviewers (Mr. or Ms.).
- Proofread your thank you notes carefully!
If you need assistance with your thank you letter(s), stop by PDO or email Anneliese or Jaclyn. We’re here to help!