• Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group

University Survival

  • Student Success Skills
    • Picking a College
    • Financing Your Education
    • Choosing a Major
    • Preparing for College
    • Managing the Personal Side of the Transition to College
    • Developing Discipline to Do Well
    • Managing the Social Side of College
    • Being an Efficient Learner
    • Taking Tests
    • Ensuring You Receive The Grade You Want
    • Managing Group Projects
    • Becoming a Campus Leader
    • Student Athletes
    • Navigating College Practices
    • Succeeding on Internships and Co-ops
    • Making Critical Decisions
    • Overcoming Challenges for Specific Types of Students
    • Setting Goals
    • Being an International Student In The United States
    • Using Resources
    • Communication Skills for College Graduates
    • Building a Professional Network
    • Using LinkedIn to Develop Your Network
    • Preparing for a Career
    • Understanding Job Protocols
    • Developing Essential Career Skills
    • Becoming a Leader
    • Overcoming Career Challenges
    • Planning for your Financial Future
  • Parent Connections
    • Parent Topics
      • Being a Supportive Parent
      • Making Critical Decisions
      • Financing Your Student’s Education
    • Parent Emails
  • Teacher Resources
  • Resources
  • Community
  • About
You are here: Student Success Skills » Preparing for a Career » Closing Out the Interview

Student Success Skills

Closing Out the Interview

0 Comments/ by jack
July 13, 2012

When you shake hands with the interviewer and leave the room, perhaps the most important step in getting a job has just begun. Every time you do an interview, you should get better at interviewing.

For this to happen, you need to do a debriefing for yourself. Here’s how to do the debriefing:

  • Make a list of every question you can remember. Do this as soon after the interview as possible.
  • Then within a day, make notes on how you answered each question. The key here is to capture the key points you made in your response.
  • Then for each question and your response, describe how you could have done better. You can always do better, so you need to adopt that attitude.

This process is absolutely critical. If you don’t go through a formal debriefing with yourself, you will likely make the same mistake over and over again.

Another thing you need to do after the interview is to send a thank you note to the interviewer. Below is a sample of a thank you note.
“Thank you very much for interviewing me yesterday. As I thought about the interview and your comments, I became more and more excited about the possibility of working for Tenix. I really appreciated hearing about the opportunities in technical sales.”

Sending the note via email is appropriate.

The final thing to do after the interview is to follow up on your prospects if you don’t hear from the interview. Here’s some guidance for the follow up.

  • Wait a week beyond the promised follow up date before you do anything.
  • Check with others to see if they have heard anything. If others have received a positive or negative response and you have heard nothing, it probably means you are still being considered. In some cases, companies will send out letters first to those they know they want and to those they know they don’t want. Those they are undecided about will not hear as quickly. If this is the case, wait before contacting the interviewer.
  • If a week has lapsed beyond the promised response date, contact the interviewer. This is generally done by e-mail or by phone. Use this phrase “I thought I’d give you a call to see if you have had a chance to review my prospects.”

As you can see from the above activities, finding a job requires that you have a level of self direction that may be challenging..

← Using Memory Tools
Taking Tests →
Comments

Leave a Reply

Want to join the discussion?
Feel free to contribute!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

Suggest a Topic

Looking for a topic and can't find it? Why not submit one...

Suggest a Topic

Share This

Rate This Topic

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...

Testimonials

  • This semester I have made a lot of changes that have made me successful.  I tried note cards for my classes and that worked very well.  Also, I tried studying more throughout the week instead of cramming it all in one night.  That seemed to work because it gave me a chance to go through everything instead of just summarizing the information.  Another thing I did was never went back to my dorm during the day.  Instead I would go to the library and get my work done that needed to be done.  I found out that going to the library is way easier to focus instead of my dorm room, where there were many distractions.  One main thing that I did was didn't party as much.  As a first semester freshman, it seemed like the cool thing to do was go out during the week, but I learned not to do that, and instead I study more..

Sign Up For Student Emails

Enter your email below to get weekly student emails.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Suggest a Topic

Looking for a topic and can't find it? Why not submit one...

Suggest a Topic

Share This

Sign Up For Parent Emails

Enter your email below to get weekly parent emails.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Suggest a Topic

Looking for a topic and can't find it? Why not submit one...

Suggest a Topic
© Copyright - University Survival