After the interviews end, and you enter the limbo of waiting to hear from the organization, you need to balance your presentation of yourself with your wish to find out whether you have the position. In your pursuit of the best possible position, you may straggle between indicating your interest and being too bold. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to the right balance. It is one element of the job search that each candidate works out independently. If I had to err, I would err on the side of moderation.
Healthcare organizations tend to make hiring decisions slowly because many health care organizations are process oriented and many decisions involve gaining consensus. Because of scheduling problems, it may be hard to get people together to reach a consensus, but once a consensus is achieved, then the decision to hire will have the support of the people involved in the decision. Try to be as patient as you can. Nevertheless, if the decision to hire takes longer than four weeks, you may want to rethink whether you really want to work in a place that takes this long to make a decision.
When you telephone the interviewer or company contact, you must strike the right balance. Consider how you come across in your dealings with the interviewer as you follow up after the formal interviews have ended. Try to sound enthusiastic, not desperate; confident, not arrogant; persistent, not pushy. Obviously, you must use good judgment when deciding whether to call. Until you hear a "Sorry, but we are not interested," you still have the green light. Watch the signals, and proceed cautiously.
Just as asking the right questions during the interview itself helps your case, so does asking the right questions afterwards. A phone call every two weeks after the interviews is appropriate. Because the process moves slowly-on average, it takes 60 days from the day of the first interview to the day the offer is actually extended-calls more frequent than once every two weeks may actually hurt your candidacy. The following questions are permissible points you might raise during a telephone call after the interviews:
- Do they need to schedule another interview?
- What is going on with the company in general? Is downsizing, expansion, reorganization occurring?
- How do hiring decisions dovetail with the calendar? Are they going to hold off on an offer until after the fiscal year begins?
- How is the process coming?
- Have they been able to contact your references?
- What is the time frame? What in-house hurdles remain to be cleared before a decision is reached?
Staying in Front of the Interviewer
By "staying in front of the interviewer," I do not mean stalking the hapless person in charge of the decision making, but rather implementing a low-key plan to maintain contact and visibility. Send an article on a topic that could prove useful to that person. When you telephone to check on the status of the decision making, state your availability and willingness to provide more information. You do not want to be a pest, but at the same time, you want the person to know you are thinking of the position and are alive and kicking.
Getting the Inside Scoop
The next step is tricky, but very productive. If at all possible, after you have interviewed, make an inside contact within the organization-perhaps someone you know professionally-who will be able to give you some helpful information. Even if your contact works in a different department than the open position, as an insider he or she can offer practical tips. For instance, the person might be able to tell you the best time to call-for example, early in the morning, after 5:00, late in the week. Your scout also might keep you up on any internal developments-an unexpected project or crisis that has pushed back the decision making. But be careful-you don't want to appear overeager or desperate.
Identifying the Decision Makers
When identifying the decision makers, as with this whole routine, you want to go far enough, but not too far. This step just increases your data bank. By knowing who makes the decisions about hiring for the position you want, you can make some reasonable assumptions about what kind of person the organization hopes to hire. In most cases, people hire people with whom they believe they can work well. Say, for example, that you find out the person actually deciding on the candidates began her career in materials management, like yourself. In this instance, you might have an edge that will buoy your confidence as you wait for the decision to be made.
Knowing who makes the hiring decisions does not give you license to directly contact them, especially if you are working with an intermediary. If the organization perceives that you cannot work within the process, you may be considered a renegade or a poor team player. In the world of hiring, there is an unwritten law of etiquette: Don't go around people. You may think the process in place wastes time, slows down decisions, or makes no sense, but there is a rationale behind the process.
By circumventing the proper channels, you risk many potential disasters.
- You risk insulting the hiring manager.
- You risk offending the board members, or whomever else you contact.
- You risk seeming oblivious to how the game is played.
Elsewhere in this book, I endorse taking calculated risks, but directly contacting the behind-the-scenes decision makers is foolhardy. Going straight to the top works in Hollywood movies, but not in real life. At this point, you have done all you can.
