Page 309 - Marky Stein - Get a Great Job When You Don't Have a Job-McGraw-Hill (2009)

Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job

2. Send the focus letter within 24 hours of the interview.
• E-mail is great.
• Mailing or faxing is also good.
• Dropping it off at the employer’s offices may be
intrusive.

Follow-Up Calls

At the close of the interview, it’s a good idea to arrange a callback
time. Three days is usually enough time to check in with the
employer. If it happens that you have to wait for a long time to
be apprised of their decision, call back in another few days.
Many people are afraid they are being too pushy by continuing
to call back. They’re concerned that they will scare the employ-
er away.
Just the opposite may be true. I actually had one supervisor
tell me that one of the reasons she hired me was that I called back
six times in one month to check on the status of the job. Each
time I called her, I asked if I could call again. She interpreted my
continued phone calls not as “pushy” but as “enthusiastic.” An
employer is always drawn to a candidate who seriously wants to
work for his or her company.
It’s okay to call once or twice a week. Set the pace and make
sure the employer doesn’t mind. You’ll be the one still plugging away
while everyone else has given up! Guess who they’ll hire when
the time comes?

Multiple Offers

As I mentioned before, by this time you may have several offers.
It is all right to let one employer know about another offer pro-
viding it is a bona fide offer. We call this leveraging offers. You may
be able to influence an employer to make a quicker decision, or
even to raise the monetary value of the offer, but all of this should
be done in a very diplomatic way.
Make sure the employer you are dealing with knows you
really want to work for his or her company and you are not just
“playing games.” When you have multiple offers, there are usu-
ally some pros and cons to each of them. . . . How do you decide?

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