ARTICLE: Contacting Potential Employers

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Especially with small to mid-sized businesses, contacting the employer can be tricky. Do you reach out? How often? To whom? Will it make you look good, or work against you?

Reaching out is a good thing – as long as your demeanor and tone communicates a spirit of helpfulness and simple honest inquiry. I remind my clients all the time, “Keep it light, easy, and short.”

Here are a few tips:
General guidelines:

• Avoid being an annoyance.
• Avoid exuberant, demonstrative pleas.
• Maintain a warm, conservative, professional demeanor.
• Keep all inquires easy and non-confrontational.
• Manage your emotions.

• Call Human Resources or contacts in the company. Use email if available. Keep all communications simple.
  E.g. “This is _________, I’m following up to ensure you received my materials and to ask if there’s an update on the position.”
• Avoid any indication that they “owe” you some kind of update.
• Avoid ANY expressions of negative emotions: frustration, anger, etc.
• Call or email approximately once a week, or every two weeks – use good judgment.

• Refrain from calling your contact at the company to ask for updates on the position unless they requested that you do so or the timeline for the next step in the process has lapsed by two business days.
• I routinely encourage my clients NOT to make ANY assumptions and to remain optimistic and allow an additional week if they haven’t been contacted. (Yes, an additional week!)