In many homes across the nation, mom is badgering her son or daughter to get on with sending out those graduation gift thank you notes.  For her, it’s a symbol of how she raised her grad, of the manners she instilled in them.

Why The Thank You Note?

And for employers, guess what, same thing.  Employers want recognition that the candidate liked what they heard in the interview and appreciated being considered.

Yet too few thank you notes go out despite the advent of the ultimate in simplicity, email.  And maybe because of email’s proliferation on miniscule mobile devices that are not conducive to our still evolving fat fingers, all too many of the thank yous that do go out are botched.  Botched being defined as a typo or inaccurate auto correct.  For a marketing person, for example, that can, and perhaps should be, the kiss of death.

 Ground Rules for the Thank You Note:

• Never send a hand written thank you post interview.  Hand written notes are too personal, too rare, too old fashioned.  Unless they come with a case of wine.  And almost always, your handwriting has become so poor, that’s what is noticed.
• Do send a 2-3 sentence thank you expressing your thanks and your passion and interest in the role.
• If you botched the interview, you botched the interview.  The thank you can never be a dissertation correcting your answer to the seventh question the third interviewer asked.  That ship sailed.
• And do make it perfect. No typos, no grammatical errors.

It just could be the difference between you and the other guy getting the job.