Why Follow-Up Can Make or Break Your Job Search

Why Follow-Up Can Make or Break Your Job SearchWhy Follow-Up Can Make or Break Your Job SearchYouve spent several hours crafting the perfect pitch to a potential client you met at a conference, clicked send on your email, and then waited expectantly for a response. None comes. Do you give up, or follow up?If you want to increase your chances of landing the gig, then youll overcome your fear of rejection and reach out again with a polite follow-up. While it takes some gumption to make yourself vulnerable with a second communication after youve already applied to a job or appealed to a professional contact for help, learning the art of following up on your initial pitches is critical to your job search.Here are some tips on how follow up diplomatically and appropriately, regardless of what type of opportunity youre courtingFind the happy medium.Effective follow-up during a job search or pitch for a gig is more art than science. Your goal is to find the middle ground between too much fo llow-up and too little. On the one hand, you want to avoid appearing desperate or needy- for example, by not allowing enough time to pass (think an hour or day) before you inquire about your original pitch. But you also dont want to wait so long to follow up that the recipient of your message has forgotten who you are and what job or project youre talking about.Once a reasonable amount of time has passed between your first communication, its okay to put out a feeler and request a status check about your application or ask if your email proposal is under consideration. Whats reasonable in terms of timing may vary depending on the circumstances and situation, but in general, give people at least a week to respond before anxiously circling back to them. Dont wait more than a month to do it, though.Let go of the guilt.Do you feel like youre bugging people by following up with a prospect? Dont sabotage your potential success by being overly worried about bothering others with an appropri ate follow-up. Whether youre trying to land a new client or new job, sometimes recruiters or hiring managers just need to be reminded about who you are for your resume to rise to the top of their crowded inbox.Keep in mind that employers are juggling dozens or even hundreds of candidates as they consider their options, usually while also doing their own job. A well-timed and polite follow-up note under the right circumstances- for example, after youve met with the hiring team for an interview- can help brand your offering in their mind and might help you make a lasting impact.Consider the starting point.elend all job search situations require the same type of follow-up. If you run your own business and responded to an initial inquiry about your services from a potential new client but then got the silent treatment, dont assume that you said something wrong or that the prospect isnt interested. Since the person requested information about gaining assistance in your area of expertise, he or she may simply be too overwhelmed to be checking every message and may welcome the chance to see your fresh email come through offering help again.On the other hand, if you applied for a job using an applicant tracking system on a corporate website, then there may be no actual person to follow up with. In this case, wasting too much time and energy crafting follow-up responses may prove to be a waste of time, since youll have no way to know whether anyone actually received them.Follow-up can make you feel nervous, but its worth fighting through your jitters to keep communication lines open with potential employers. You never know if that follow-up note or email will be the one that opens the door to something youve worked hard on the front end to get.Know someone looking for a job? Refer a friend to with this link- youll get a month free service and theyll get 30% off