Two weeks after interview, no response, advice?

Hey guys,

I have been reading around here and I see it is not at all uncommon to go two weeks and not hear back about an interview. I thought I'd post my own topic though to get some feedback.

I interviewed Thursday 1/10 for a job in the mortgage field. I have five years customer service/hospitality experience and a year of real estate experience. I arrived very promptly and was complimented on this. Interviewer was the head of the department, VERY friendly guy, we joked a bit about a few things, interview was very smooth, about 20 minutes, he remarked that my experience was very fitting to what they were looking for, at the end of the interview he even said "if we decide to bring you aboard, the only problem I see is that we have the same name!" as a joke.

I neglected to ask for a timeframe when I left but I left saying "talk to you soon" and he said yes we would.

I sent an email thank you that same day, and to be sure I mailed one also. Last Friday (a week and one day after interview) I called and left him a voicemail that I was curious to their timeframe for hiring and if there was any information I could provide to aide in the decision making process. Tomorrow will be a week after that call and no call back.

They had five of the same positions to fill, it had been posted about five days when I interviewed and at that point he had only interviewed one other person.

I also have a friend who is a contract employee and knows of the gentleman that interviewed me, but she doesn't know him personally enough to feel comfortable asking him about the job.

I am debating calling one more time just to see. I am also thinking there was a holiday in there also, and it has only been 9 business days since the interview.

I am really interested in this job as it is exactly what I am looking for. I turned down another job offer in the meantime.
Most of you would probably say just to let it go, but has anyone gone two or three weeks and got the job?

Call again and then leave it alone.

Interviewers say all kinds of stuff. I would contact them one more time and find out whats going on...and keep applying in the meantime.

clingingtohope in Westland, Michigan said: Hey guys,

I have been reading around here and I see it is not at all uncommon to go two weeks and not hear back about an interview. I thought I'd post my own topic though to get some feedback.

I interviewed Thursday 1/10 for a job in the mortgage field. I have five years customer service/hospitality experience and a year of real estate experience. I arrived very promptly and was complimented on this. Interviewer was the head of the department, VERY friendly guy, we joked a bit about a few things, interview was very smooth, about 20 minutes, he remarked that my experience was very fitting to what they were looking for, at the end of the interview he even said "if we decide to bring you aboard, the only problem I see is that we have the same name!" as a joke.

I neglected to ask for a timeframe when I left but I left saying "talk to you soon" and he said yes we would.

I sent an email thank you that same day, and to be sure I mailed one also. Last Friday (a week and one day after interview) I called and left him a voicemail that I was curious to their timeframe for hiring and if there was any information I could provide to aide in the decision making process. Tomorrow will be a week after that call and no call back.

They had five of the same positions to fill, it had been posted about five days when I interviewed and at that point he had only interviewed one other person.

Regardless of the story, you put your own time limit on the waiting game. For me, its 30 days. I mark it off on my calendar.

You also never stop looking no matter how bad you want a particular job. So much of this is a numbers' game.

Yeah, give them one more call and then end it.

Don't call. You've observed it's only been nine days. Wait for them to call you. They will if they're interested. If not, no amount of calling will change their minds. Keep looking in the meantime.

I guess I'll wait til Monday then call. 10 business days isn't all that long to hire 5 people in addition to doing your actual job. Like you guys said calling isn't going to change their mind. He may have just not had any news to report.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to never hear back after a job interview. I doubt that more than half of the (very few) employers who've interviewed me have contacted me afterwards. One manager even started the interview by saying "No one likes to give bad news, so I won't call you unless I'm going to offer you a position."

Since I'm unemployed, I wouldn't have turned down a position to wait on hearing from another employer. Unless they said something which CLEARLY indicated that I was the front-runner, I would never assume that I was going to be offered a job no matter how well the interview went (for me, there has been no correlation between whether I am offered a job and how well I perceive that the interview went. I have been offered jobs when I felt like I bombed the interview and I haven't gotten offers after interviews when I thought that I did better that I would have believed myself capable of doing, interviews at which in the interviewer said that I was impressive).

I know the lack of common courtesy these days is really missing in the search process, but it does exist. I got proof today.

Earlier today I got a VM from a hiring manager telling me I wasn't picked for state position. I applied early December and interviewed a few weeks ago. The VM was very nice, and the manager mentioned they might have more positions opening in the coming months, and said to call her back.

I just got off the phone with her; and I found out that only one of nine candidates (out of 156 applications) who were interviewed. While I'd've liked the job, I also know there were at least two people in consideration had previously worked in the section (budget shortfall).

She could've easily just written a letter, and she certainly didn't have to tell me about how many people applied/interviewed (I knew about the two people who were previously in the group).

jenab in Austin, Texas said: I got a VM from a hiring manager telling me I wasn't picked for state position. I applied early December and interviewed a few weeks ago. The VM was very nice, and the manager mentioned they might have more positions opening in the coming months, and said to call her back.

I just got off the phone with her.....

I would almost consider drafting and mailing a letter to her (no e-mail) memorializing your followup phone conversation and reiterating your interest in future positions. In that conversation she opened the door; you have to walk through it.

Something similar worked for me. I had two interviews for my first paralegal job. The day after my second interview, the office manager called with the bad news. But - a few days later I received a letter from the shareholder telling me other positions would open and to stay in touch. I did. I immediately answered her letter with one of my own, thanking her for hers which I did not expect and updating her on related work I had discussed during my interview. I was hired a week later.

I have been reading some of these comments about the 2 weeks after interview and no word. I had a similar situation over the holidays. The week before Christmas I faxed a resume on Sunday, got a call on Monday, returned the call on Tuesday and was interviewed on Wednesday. Bing, Bang, Boom. It was so quick. I was told by the person who called me to arrange the interview that she and the hiring person spoke at length about my resume and they were worried that I was over qualified. (If I hear that one more time, I am going to scream). Anyway the interview went well. After I got home I e-mailed a thank you. A few days after Christmas I sent an e-mail asking if the position had been filled. No response. I figured it was the holidays so ok. I let a week go by and then I sent another e-mail. I figured if I didn't hear after this one, then I wasn't going to hear or the position had been filled. About a week after I sent the last e-mail, I got an e-mail saying the position had been filled. So that ended up being about 3+ weeks before I got a response. My thought is that after a couple of weeks an e-mail inquiry is fine, but if there is still no response, then let it go and move on. I keep trying to remind myself that it is the current state of affairs but it is getting harder and harder to believe that.

Unemployed Paralegal in Denver, Colorado said: I would almost consider drafting and mailing a letter to her (no e-mail) memorializing your followup phone conversation and reiterating your interest in future positions. In that conversation she opened the door; you have to walk through it.

Agreed. I resisted my usual urge to do a thank you note immediately after the interview; being a state agency, the usual rules don't apply the process can be rather... rigid, and I didn't want to break any rules. Both she and the admin will be getting letters (the admin deserves a thanks just for the fact she had to walk me to every stop (3 in the building plus in and out of the building).

I probably shouldn't be so satisfied with a rejection; it helps I got a great contract lead earlier today (no probably of long term, but any work at the lead company would open a lot of doors).

I think I may call the recruiter Monday or Tuesday for some information. I really do not want to seem like a pest, but I want them to know I am out there. It seems like it is a hard balance between the two.

I have interviewed for about six jobs in my six years of working and been offered a job each time (not accepted all of them...), so I am unfamiliar with this large response time and the aspect of not being offered a job...

Hiring five people in a span of ten business days I guess is a lot to ask. Also it is a new position in a new department, so all the pay, etc has to get worked out. They may just be weighing all their options. I am not giving out all hope, but not holding out much. I think it could go either way.

clingingtohope in Westland, Michigan said: I think I may call the recruiter Monday or Tuesday for some information. I really do not want to seem like a pest, but I want them to know I am out there. It seems like it is a hard balance between the two.

If multiple days pass, you aren't being a pest. The "pests" are the candidates who call hourly, or call every day even though they were told it will be at least a week.

If there's a set time for a response, I usually contact a day or two after. If there's not, I usually call within 3-7 days, but after that first call back never more than once a week (and I might email instead of calling, since it's less intrusive).

Do some companies have to have a job posted for a certain amount of time and interview before they act on hiring?

I earned my accounting degree in 2009 and I've had two jobs in the past 3-1/2 years. Upon an out-of-state relocation I've spent 6 months unemployed. I've found my experiences the past 6 months to be remarkably consistent, throughout the 80+ applications I've submitted and the 10 interviews I've been on since last summer.

1) Your "feel" for the interview is mostly irrelevant. Unless you know for sure that absolutely bombed it, your personal perspective on how you conducted yourself at the interview is not going to be indicative of anything relevant to how the hiring manager perceived you at the interview. You're too biased towards your own viability. This is why interview coaching (friends or family who will be brutally honest) is necessary before you get out there.

2) If they don't contact you after the interview, you aren't getting the job. I've been struck by the advice I've read/heard from others who suggest that if you repeatedly call either the interviewer or the HR analyst that this will have any impact on their decision. It won't. I have sent email thank yous, hand written letters, placed thank you calls - they're nice and I wouldn't say to not be courteous, but they are not going to affect the hiring decision at all.

3) NEVER turn down an actual job offer because you're waiting on contact from a possible offer elsewhere, unless the job offer you've been given is awful. Even if it's mediocre, take the position. Hiring managers complain about hiring someone who suddenly turn around and leave as soon as another job offer is given. They only have their own profession to blame for this by not consistently maintaining clear communication with applicants who are not actually in consideration. Take the job and bounce later.

4) Once you interview, put it away. Just move on. Don't dwell on it, unless you're using the experience to coach for the next one. It's a bear out there and this process will ruin your confidence if you let it.

Jake in Sycamore, Illinois said: 1) Your "feel" for the interview is mostly irrelevant. Unless you know for sure that absolutely bombed it, your personal perspective on how you conducted yourself at the interview is not going to be indicative of anything relevant to how the hiring manager perceived you at the interview. You're too biased towards your own viability. This is why interview coaching (friends or family who will be brutally honest) is necessary before you get out there.

2) If they don't contact you after the interview, you aren't getting the job. I've been struck by the advice I've read/heard from others who suggest that if you repeatedly call either the interviewer or the HR analyst that this will have any impact on their decision. It won't. I have sent email thank yous, hand written letters, placed thank you calls - they're nice and I wouldn't say to not be courteous, but they are not going to affect the hiring decision at all.

1) For most jobs that don't require superior "people" skills (e.g., management, marketing), the interview is less important than what's on your resume. Employers are looking for a skills match and a cultural fit, and when they start the interview process they've often have already ranked the candidates. It takes an extremely good or extremely bad performance at an interview to get the to re-shuffle their ranking.

2) When you walk at the door at the end of the interview, they've pretty much decided whether or not they want to hire you.

Jeff in Denver, Colorado said: 1) For most jobs that don't require superior "people" skills (e.g., management, marketing), the interview is less important than what's on your resume. Employers are looking for a skills match and a cultural fit, and when they start the interview process they've often have already ranked the candidates. It takes an extremely good or extremely bad performance at an interview to get the to re-shuffle their ranking.

2) When you walk at the door at the end of the interview, they've pretty much decided whether or not they want to hire you.

It's difficult to make generalizations because every industry is different, but I have to say I mostly agree with both these points. Interviews are about personality, organizational fit, and verifying basic facts about your history. This is really all an interview should be about, ultimately. If you're among the top 5 of applicants, hiring managers have a basic idea where you rank before you show up, so they're looking to see if they like you and if you haven't completely BS'd your resume or work history.

Where companies fail in this regard is when they start turning the interview process into a beauty contest. No one needs 5 interviews to decide who to hire. There's something wrong with that firm, internally, if they're doing that. That's a warning sign to jobseekers. If someone is asking you to come in more than 2 or 3 times, they don't know what they want or they don't know how to recruit for their personnel needs. Stay away from those companies because you'll be back out looking again in 6 months anyway.

Jake in Sycamore, Illinois said: It's difficult to make generalizations because every industry is different, but I have to say I mostly agree with both these points. Interviews are about personality, organizational fit, and verifying basic facts about your history. This is really all an interview should be about, ultimately. If you're among the top 5 of applicants, hiring managers have a basic idea where you rank before you show up, so they're looking to see if they like you and if you haven't completely BS'd your resume or work history.

Where companies fail in this regard is when they start turning the interview process into a beauty contest. No one needs 5 interviews to decide who to hire. There's something wrong with that firm, internally, if they're doing that. That's a warning sign to jobseekers. If someone is asking you to come in more than 2 or 3 times, they don't know what they want or they don't know how to recruit for their personnel needs. Stay away from those companies because you'll be back out looking again in 6 months anyway.

I agree. When I am scheduled for a 3rd interview, I feel like I should bring my accordian.

Bluetea in Texas said: I agree. When I am scheduled for a 3rd interview, I feel like I should bring my accordian.

Yeah. It's painful, but you have to just decline to participate. "Thank you, but I'm pursuing other opportunities." Leave it at that. Beyond 2 or 3 interviews, don't bother wasting your time because all they're doing is wasting yours.

Jake in Sycamore, Illinois said: Yeah. It's painful, but you have to just decline to participate. "Thank you, but I'm pursuing other opportunities." Leave it at that. Beyond 2 or 3 interviews, don't bother wasting your time because all they're doing is wasting yours.

You're right. The real slap in the face comes after you jump through all the hoops and see the job reposted, a month later.

Bluetea in Texas said: You're right. The real slap in the face comes after you jump through all the hoops and see the job reposted, a month later.

That phenomena is another thing I meant to touch on earlier - thanks for bringing up the job reposting. I cannot reaffirm forcefully enough how bad of a sign it is when companies repeatedly repost the same position over and over.

All the possible reasons for this are bad. One reason could be that funding was pulled and they withdrew the listing. Obviously it's not a good sign if management either can't or won't commit to their staffing needs. Another reason is that their 1st tier candidate didn't work out. Well, what does that tell you? Another reason is that their SECOND tier candidates didn't work out, either. That speaks for itself. Another reason is that they've tweaked the description and opened it up for re-recruitment. That obviously means they have absolutely no idea what their staffing needs are and you're dealing with a group of bad managers who will not assist you in your career.

Honestly, this is all common sense stuff. But I think people have a real desire to prove themselves and accordingly, they're willing to internalize a lot of these bad outcomes out of a need to remain hopeful that they're being dealt with fairly. Well, listen up people - you aren't. This is a broken workforce and human resources as an industry has been thoroughly trashed over years of economic stagnation and professional outsourcing.

This is not to say that one should just give up, and it certainly isn't to say that you should allow any cynicism to creep into your personality while you're interviewing. But I think, just as a matter of self-perseverance, job seekers need to be realistic, at least to themselves, about what this process is really about.

Jake in Sycamore, Illinois said: That phenomena is another thing I meant to touch on earlier - thanks for bringing up the job reposting. I cannot reaffirm forcefully enough how bad of a sign it is when companies repeatedly repost the same position over and over.

I wanted to change jobs, so I answered an ad for a job with a major downtown firm. I met most of the requirements, but was slightly weak on another. My rejection letter arrived a few days later.

The ad appeared again a few weeks later. I applied again. I was rejected again.

Repeat of the above. I didn't understand why - I did meet the qualifications. So I went against my personal policy of calling employers and called the in-house legal recruiter who had run the ad. Surprisingly, I was put through to her.

I said up front I wasn't expecting to be interviewed, but I did not understand why I hadn't been called, considering I met the requirements. The recruiter remembered me and asked me to hold on. I actually believed I might get an interview.

She came back on the line and explained that in the past her firm had "problems" with my firm. The call ended. I thought, "what problems." Then I remembered that the shareholder had squared off against the head of the practice group I would have worked in over a case. Also the shareholder had outlawyered in court a member of that practice group.

I never understood why I should have suffered guilt by association and be penalized because of these attorneys' petty egos. If they doubted any of my quals, they could have cleared them up during the interview.

Unemployed Paralegal in Denver, Colorado said: I wanted to change jobs, so I answered an ad for a job with a major downtown firm. I met most of the requirements, but was slightly weak on another. My rejection letter arrived a few days later.

The ad appeared again a few weeks later. I applied again. I was rejected again.

Repeat of the above. I didn't understand why - I did meet the qualifications. So I went against my personal policy of calling employers and called the in-house legal recruiter who had run the ad. Surprisingly, I was put through to her.

I said up front I wasn't expecting to be interviewed, but I did not understand why I hadn't been called, considering I met the requirements. The recruiter remembered me and asked me to hold on. I actually believed I might get an interview.

She came back on the line and explained that in the past her firm had "problems" with my firm. The call ended. I thought, "what problems." Then I remembered that the shareholder had squared off against the head of the practice group I would have worked in over a case. Also the shareholder had outlawyered in court a member of that practice group.

I never understood why I should have suffered guilt by association and be penalized because of these attorneys' petty egos. If they doubted any of my quals, they could have cleared them up during the interview.

Frankly I'm amazed they even spoke with you directly on the issue. Needless to say, your experience does NOT speak highly of the firm you were rejected for, at any level. Someone at some point should have been able say, wait a minute - we shouldn't reject an employee because we don't like who they used to work for. Clearly their culture not only prevented them from addressing the issue at (or soon after) the interview, but no one was able to move past that bias in the first place.

And, I suspect I may have experienced something similar as your situation, UP, a few months ago. I used to work for a regional hospital. I wasn't there very long - about a year - but was there long enough to complete a system upgrade successfully and to experience a full cycle of their business (I'm in accounting). They began to experience a significant staffing problem last summer, rather suddenly, losing a top manager and another member of their support staff. This shifted a lot of work onto me and some other staff in different departments in a very short amount of time. I was quickly reassigned to a different manager who had zero supervisory experience and I increasingly ran into conflict with some of the things she started having me do, like taking on work I expressly had no experience in or placing expectations on me that I didn't have time to identify or live up to because of the very short amount of time I was there. I tried to work with them on figuring out solutions to these problems, but frankly I didn't have a strong sense they knew what they were doing and I didn't feel comfortable staying under those conditions. At any rate, I was relatively new there and just decided to move on when the chance came. I gave them a 6 week notice and left the company on relatively good terms.

Fast forward a few months, and I had relocated elsewhere with my family. I applied to work at a local hospital. Even while recruitment was open, my application was rejected. No reason given. Same position opened up again a month later and I re-applied. Again, rejected, days after submitted my app. No reason given. I later found out that this hospital had just joined up with my previous employer. It's frustrating because I left on good terms, I was just wet behind the ears and didn't have the experience they needed to navigate all those personnel and duty changes they needed. But looking back on that, it's obvious that I was rejected because of my past affiliation.

Jake in Sycamore, Illinois said: Frankly I'm amazed they even spoke with you directly on the issue. Needless to say, your experience does NOT speak highly of the firm you were rejected for, at any level. Someone at some point should have been able say, wait a minute - we shouldn't reject an employee because we don't like who they used to work for. Clearly their culture not only prevented them from addressing the issue at (or soon after) the interview, but no one was able to move past that bias in the first place.

A plausible excuse could have been the firm had to erect a Chinese wall around me because my firm and it had faced off in that case. I had worked a little on that case, but the firm did not know that. This firm is a major law firm in Denver.

Ironically, that partner whom the shareholder outlawyered at hearing became a judge. I don't believe that when my firm appeared before her at hearings we were treated fairly.

I applied to that firm a few more times. I'd bet my first firm's name caused my resume to be shtcanned, even after I had left the firm years before.