Every week, NETSHARE hosts Ask the Coach, a phone-in coaching session with leading career management experts. Here is an excerpt from a recent session with Christine Dennison, The Job Search Coach.
Christine Dennison was the host for this week’s career coaching session. Christine has more than 20 years of experience helping senior executives and middle managers through the maze of resume creation, branding, Internet strategies, networking, and interview techniques. Her prior experience includes business operations, marketing, corporate HR, training, and headhunting.
At the start of the call, Annette DiSano, COO of NETSHARE, noted that based on the number of job postings with salaries of $200,000 or more that came in this last week, the executive job market seems to be improving. This led to a discussion of how to engage with hiring managers and keep the conversation going.
Unlike past coaching calls, this week’s call centered on timing your follow-up approach and how to pursue actual activity, rather than fielding questions about how to get noticed. Some of Chris's tips for effective follow-up include:
- Always ask about the timetable following an interview or during the early stages of the communication. It doesn’t matter if you are working directly with the hiring company or going through a recruiter, they should be able to tell you how soon they want to hire. Then, no matter what you are told, give them an extra few weeks grace period. As Chris explained, hiring companies are being extra cautious right now (some might even classify them as "nervous"). Hiring anyone appears to be more of a consensus-driven decision now than it has been in the past. There are a lot of stakeholders who are very concerned in NOT making a hiring mistake.
- When you are interviewed by several people, Chris advises that you reach out to each of them individually to express interest and inquire about timing. She pointedly suggested that you not copy the addressee's boss in any communication – that could send the wrong message.
- When asked how much is too much follow-up, Chris responded, as you might expect, that it depends on the situation. She offered the phrase, "professionally persistent" as a guideline for the amount of follow-up and timing. She also suggested that some of the follow-up communication could include recent information that corresponds to your discussion during the interview... don’t just send a "what is the status" kind of note. Chris also mentioned that keeping the relationship "open" is the goal; this increases the odds of getting called for another position when that opportunity comes up.
