By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
EP 3126 There are times when your desire to follow up can backfire on you.
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You know the feeling. You walk out of an interview and you are just floating. You think, I absolutely nailed that.
You’re excited. You’re confident. You can already see yourself getting coffee in the break room.
But then the waiting starts. And that waiting game, wow. It can be one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the whole job search.
And this is the question that just haunts you, right? You felt a real connection. The conversation was great. You had perfect answers for everything.
So why is your inbox a ghost town? It’s super frustrating and honestly, a little confusing. So let’s get into what might actually be happening during that silence and how our best intentions can sometimes, well, completely backfire. All right.
First, let’s talk about what’s going on with you during that post-interview quiet time. It’s a real emotional roller coaster. And if you can understand that journey, you can avoid making a really common mistake.
I mean, does this timeline look familiar? Day one, you’re on top of the world. You’re feeling hopeful. You’re feeling good.
By day three, though, that little seed of doubt starts to creep in. And by day five, oh man, that anxiety has blossomed into this powerful temptation, the urge to follow up again. And it’s right there at that exact moment that so many of us mess up.
And this brings us to something we’re going to call the follow-up fallacy. It’s this trap that even the best, most enthusiastic job candidates can fall right into when that post-interview anxiety just takes over the driver’s seat. The source material really doesn’t pull any punches here.
It says that when you follow up multiple times in just a few days, you come across as impatient and demanding. And let’s just sit with those two words for a second because they are incredibly powerful and not in a good way. So what is this fallacy exactly? Well, it’s this mistaken belief that sending more emails or making more calls is a great way to show how interested you are.
You think you’re screaming, I’m passionate, I’m dedicated. But what they’re actually hearing is something else entirely. And this is the core of the problem.
It’s this huge gap between what you intend to communicate and how they actually perceive it. What you’re trying to say is getting completely lost in translation. I mean, look at this.
It lays out the disconnect so perfectly. On your side, your intention is to show you’re eager, you’re passionate, you’re proactive, all great things. But on their side, the hiring manager’s perception, it’s that you seem impatient, demanding, and maybe that you even lack a little professional judgment.
It’s a total communication breakdown. Let’s dig into that first word, impatient. Look, a hiring team is juggling a ton of stuff.
Other candidates, meetings, their own projects. To them, your constant check-ins don’t really read as eagerness. They read as you not being able to respect their process and their timeline.
A little strategic patience, that shows confidence. And then you’ve got the second word, demanding. You might think you’re just asking for a quick little update, but from their perspective, it can feel like you’re making a demand on their time.
And think about it, you haven’t even joined the team yet, and the perception could be that you’re already going to be difficult to manage. Okay, so if this isn’t sending the message you want it to send, what’s the actual result? Well, unfortunately, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what you’re hoping for. The source is really clear on this one.
This strategy is not going to get you the result that you want. So all that energy, all that anxiety you poured into those follow-ups, it’s actually working against your number one goal, which is getting that job offer. It’s a pretty simple chain reaction when you think about it.
Step one, you send multiple follow-ups. Step two, that action directly leads them to form a negative perception of you, that you’re impatient and demanding. And the final kind of devastating step, you don’t just fail to get the offer, you actively push it away.
And the source uses a really strong word here, repel. This isn’t just a neutral thing where they, you know, pick someone else. Your actions can literally create an aversion.
You’re pushing the opportunity away from you, almost like you’re the wrong end of a magnet. So now that we’ve walked through this all-too-common pitfall, what’s the single most important thing you need to remember from all of this? It really just boils down to these three things. First, and this is huge, your good intentions don’t mean they’ll be perceived in a good way.
Second, those frequent follow-ups, they can accidentally signal some really negative traits. And most importantly, all of this can actively push away the very opportunity you’re trying so hard to get. And that leaves us with one last question for you to really think about in your own job search.
The next time you feel that post-interview anxiety creeping in and your hand is hovering over the keyboard to type in another follow-up, just pause and ask yourself this, is my eagerness actually helping my chances here or could it be pushing this opportunity away?
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