How to Write a Memorable Thank You Email!

Pressing "Send" is easy, but writing a truly memorable thank you email that makes you stick in the mind of the interviewer isn't so simple.

Let's talk about my top 3 tips for writing an amazing post-interview thank you email!

Resources

• Make a copy of my Thank You Email template

Watch it in action

Tip 1 - Bring up something specific mentioned during the interview

Sure it's easy to say to mention something specific but what’s the best way to go about this? You have 2 big opportunities during the interview:

1. First, when the interview begins and there’s a bit of small talk, if it’s a Monday or Tuesday, ask them how their weekend went. If it’s Wednesday through Friday, ask them what they have planned for the coming weekend. Either way, they’ll share something a bit personal you can reference in your thank you note
2. What if they jump right into questions instead? No problem. At the end of the interview make sure to ask my favorite question as the candidate: if you think about a recent hire you enjoy working with, what characteristics did they have?

This end of the interview question kills two birds with one stone: the question shows you are a self-starter, and in order to answer, the hiring manager is forced to think of a specific person and give a concrete example, just what you need for that follow up email!

So why is being specific so important? Just imagine if YOU received these 2 connection requests on LinkedIn:

Hey really liked your presentation today. Let’s connect

OR

Hey I really enjoyed your presentation on how to run meetings at work. The PAR - Purpose Agenda Result - formula is simple yet effective, will definitely be implementing this next week. Let’s connect!

Kind of a no-brainer right? Same thing applies to thank you emails (and for networking in general but that's for another day)

Tip 2 - Get their email address (whatever it takes)

Best case scenario, before you walk out or end the video call, you remember to ask the interviewer for their email address. If they give it to you, perfect.

If you forget OR they politely decline for whatever reason you have 2 options:

1. First, the easy way out is to ask the recruiter to forward your thank you note along. This is what I did for one of my interviews and recruiters are usually happy to help
2. Second, the more aggressive approach that I’ve also tried, use a free email finder tool like mailscoop or hunter.io, and input the interviewer’s full name.

Best case, you find them. Worst case, the email bounces or you reach the wrong person but they’re still nice enough to forward your email along. You lose nothing by trying!

Tip 3 - Pleasant Persistence

You might hear a lot of different opinions around when to send the thank you email, and the rule of thumb is to send it within 24 hours of the interview

If you don’t hear back right away, don’t worry and stick to the recruiter’s timeline. If they told you 1 week and 1 week later you still haven’t heard back, send a follow up.

In my experience, 3 follow ups after that initial thank you note seems to be the limit before it gets a little annoying

Bonus Tip - Address the interviewer's reservations about you

During the interview, perhaps you felt like one of your answers were a bit weak because you didn’t use my CARL structure for behavioral questions - go check out that video - or the interviewer straight up said you were lacking experience in a certain area

Now that the interview is over and you’re no longer nervous and bound by tunnel vision, this is your chance to include 1-2 sentences addressing those concerns head on. For example:

You mentioned the ideal candidate should have content marketing experience. While I mainly work in product marketing, I’d like to add that I’m also responsible for drafting our quarterly newsletters that have a 48% open rate, which is 9% higher than our team average

Be careful with this tip. You should only use this if the thing you bring up is related to a topic you and the interviewer talked about, and you should NOT treat this as a chance to pitch something NEW about yourself

If you’re interviewing right now I highly recommend going through my common interview question and answers playlist