I have been hired for more than 10 years, and I have this simple rule
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I haven't been hiring people for more than 10 years, but I swear by the simple process of being transparent about what I'm looking for in a new hire. The hard part is the reflection on exactly what that is.
I wrote about this several years ago: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/were-hiring-engineers-a.... It's basically a re-presentation of interview training I've gotten.
> How someone presents in interviews might not translate to effectiveness in the role. While sending a thank-you note doesn't necessarily guarantee the person will be a good hire, it gives you the tiniest bit more data: The candidate is eager, organized, and well mannered enough to send the note. It shows resourcefulness, too, because the candidate often has to hunt down an email address the interviewer never gave them. At Insider Inc., we look to hire "good eggs." The thank-you email is a mark for the good-egg column.
Maybe I'm extrapolating and she doesn't view "good egg" as part of being successful employee, but I think that's what she's getting at. I believe she's trying to identify soft skills at collaboration.
That's my most charitable interpretation. Either that, or she's trying to identify people who share her cultural norms, which is problematic in itself.
I agree with the rest of your comment, but I find the above attitude problematic in itself. There's nothing wrong with filtering for cultural norms, you've all right to select the people you'll be spending most of your non-sleeping life with. For example, I don't really want to work with someone who's anti-gay (i.e. I want them to share my "live and let live" cultural norm), even though that's clearly a cultural norm for many people all over the world.
The values are non-negotiables. To take your example, for any company I work for or manage for, it must be a place where gay people--for example--are welcome and comfortable being themselves.
Cultural norms are a different story. I want my hires to add to our company's pool of cultural perspectives. This means they may have behaviors that diverge from present norms. This can be disruptive, but I think it's a net win in over time. If accepting cultural diversity is a value, it doesn't eliminate disruption, but it certainly makes it less painful.
To me, whether someone does or doesn't send a thank you note does not speak to the explicit or implicit values of any place I've been to. It's in pure norm space. And even then, it doesn't say much to me. I appreciate receiving thank-you notes on a human level, but it does nothing for me in making a hiring decision.
I'm not, or at least, not everything should be spelled out; what you want to avoid is people 'cheating' at their job interview by trying to bullshit their way through the application process.
We have a technical assessment, but look at (and ask a lot of) things outside of what was asked exactly; basic expected software development skills such as unit testing, documentation, a grasp of technology used, a drive to keep up to date and learn new things, that kinda thing.
I guess you could fake those? But I think that if you've got the drive to "fake" learn a new technology you've got the drive we're looking for.
Most programming exercises that companies use in interviews are much simpler (trivial really) than actual software projects, and personally I don't see the need to write 1 page of documentation and unittests for code that can fit on 3 pages... Does that mean I'm against documentation and can't write unittests? No, I'm simply being pragmatic.
I write thank you e-mails to people who give me their business card during the interview. I'm sure as hell not hunting down your e-mail just to send you one. If you expect me to, you're not respecting my time as a candidate.
Hey, I wrote something! … I’ve been hiring people for 10 years, and I still swear by a simple rule: If someone doesn’t send a thank you email, don’t hire them.
A thank you email to someone you're already in an email conversation with is not at all unreasonable, but expecting people to hunt down your email address just to send you a thank you, is downright weird.
"To be clear, a thank-you note does not ensure someone will be a successful hire. But using the thank-you email as a barrier to entry has proved beneficial, at least at my company." the author says. Blatantly ignorant towards all the genius they've lost in their broken process. "The handful of times we've moved forward with a candidate despite not receiving a thank you, we've been ghosted, or the offer we make is ultimately rejected." The author says, because changing the strategy for a handful of cases out of thousands is definitely really scientific and stuff. "As a hiring manager, you should always expect a thank-you email, and you should never make an offer to someone who neglected to send one." as the last quote just showing the pure entitlement the author suffers...
That's exactly the kind of thing that makes me happy to be in Software, people who bring trouble usually don't get promoted into responsibility...
Perhaps this is selecting for desperate job hunters who send thank you notes.
That's entirely plausible. I mean, you're probably <insert arbitrary percentage here> more likely to not turn an offer down, even if it's below the cost-of-living for the area in question, if you're willing to go to those lengths, yeah?
Their solution to the problem of having offers turned down seems to be not to investigate why but to just hire the people most willing to take them... I mean, they found a loop-hole but to quote the Big Lebowski: "You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole."
> makes me happy to be in Software
This might well be the one detail that makes the difference here. In software, and many other industries, this would be stupid and counterproductive, but in journalism, polite but invasive persistence might actually be a relevant character trait.
It would really be a different situation. But this is not about looking for a specific trait which is tied to a job.
Unfortunately all that they achieve with this strategy is locking out people who are "not like us". It all boils down to different cultures different rules, in Germany sending a thank you note to a business contact over a non disclosed communication channel would be perceived as very unprofessional or creepy.
It's the step right before adding your business contacts on facebook uninvited... So if your goal is to avoid hiring German people, the strategy is probably great.
(Taking the German example here because we Germans are very sensitive with data and privacy. The rule could also be exchanged for any other different no hire rule, overall what you achieve with such rules, is simply locking out a group of people, but those are people who could help your business succeed.)
I'm not sure if it is a vapid bubble or they are just callous morons who don't get why people would get pissed off over being denied a job for arbitrary reasons and don't learn from experience.
So basically the author expects the candidate to send a thank you email even though she didn't exchange her email address. Well, I think such email is natural when you make a personal contact with the interviewer, but in this scenario(when you receive emails from noreply@bigcorporate.com) it feels unnecessary and intrusive to me.
Companies need good employees. VCs need companies to invest their customers’ money into. The implicit power relationship in these situations is unhealthy.
Not only for the courtesy, but also to stay in the interviewer’s head if they were undecided. Most people don’t send these, thus, you’ll be a bit unique and might tip things in your favor.
An interviewer that uses it as a hiring requirement probably wants someone thoughtful and willing to do a little extra compared to others. Seems minor compared to multi hour programming tests.
Seems to me that you'd be more likely be selected for people are willing to comply with arbitrary social conventions for the sake of getting ahead. Or even just those who happened grow up in an environment that passed on the folk knowledge that this is necessary. How many people who send these "thank you notes" are truly thankful for the experience?
> Seems minor compared to multi hour programming tests.
It is minor if you know you need to do it. The thing is, that some applicants will, and some won't (entirely independently of their capacity to do the job).
And does it matter if they are truly thankful? It’s not like people share things on the internet to truly SHARE, out of their own good will. They either want fake internet points, recognition, or traffic to end up selling something down the road.
A thank you that is 1) Expected and 2) Not truly meant seems pretty arbitrary to me. I would show respect to the person who took time out of their day to interview me by not taking any more time out of their day by making them read a thank you message.
To be clear: I don't think there is anything wrong with sending a thank you. I just don't think it should be considered necessary, and it definitely shouldn't be a primary signal on hiring decisions.
Like Eastern European immigrant that could only afford to live among white trash blue collar folks? I should be too stupid to know how the great big American economy works then since my high school was surrounded by cattle farm. I’m pretty white trash still to this day. But even in our retarded educational system, we knew handshakes, pleases and thank yous were still important in a cooperative, functioning society.
You know what, that's funny. The poorer folks I know that escaped their poverty, we all know our pleases and thank yous. It's actually the people that grew up with money that are social idiots and ungrateful bastards that like to complain about every little thing under the sun.
Ah yes, the folk-knowledge from high school. Always offered by the academic class with no background in having real jobs.
IMO, thank you letters seem desperate for anything other than an entry level job. Interviews should be testing you for fit (primarily technical) for the role. If you pass this criteria, they will be very excited for you to join with their team because there is high demand for skilled workers.
Is a chemistry teacher that's never been employed in the private sector (aka, had a 'real job') as a chemist a good source of knowledge about obtaining a job as a chemist? Not really.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect your problem is actually with the automatic dismissal part - and I agree, there are probably many cases where it would be inappropriate (or at the very least, stupid) to not consider someone for not sending a follow up. We can argue specifics all day, but in general I don't think it's unreasonable for hiring managers to expect that kind of communication.
But beyond that, I am a hiring manager, and I really can't tell you which people I've hired have sent me thank you notes. I'm pretty sure it's a small minority. I have yet to hire someone who's a "bad egg" or just doesn't care about their coworkers.
Beyond that, expecting people to adhere to a protocol they simply may not know is unfair. As I've said elsewhere, the original author should take the things she thinks a thank you note shows and just screen for them directly, rather than extrapolating from a norm that some people may have and others may not for reasons that have nothing to do with anything.
If I thought an applicant knew they should send a thank you note but that they just dropped the ball, that would be a negative sign. But I see no reason to assume that.