The Interview Is Over. Now What?

The thank-you note, the follow-up, and what to do when they ghost you

You walk out the door. Or you log off the video call. The interview is over.

You exhale. You did it.

But the process isn’t finished yet.

What you do next is a critical part of the process.

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The Thank-You Note

Let’s start with the thank-you note.

The first rule is simple: you should follow up every single interview with a thank-you email to each person who interviewed you.

To do this, you have to remember to ask for their email address before the conversation ends. Just a simple, “Would you mind sharing the best email to send a follow-up note to?” works perfectly.

Now, sometimes, an interviewer will say, “Hey, don’t worry about sending a thank-you letter.”

Trust me, this is not a bad sign at all. I’ve had this happen many times and still gotten the offer. It’s usually because they get hundreds of emails a day and are just trying to manage their inbox.

Respect their wishes, but for everyone else, a note should be sent.

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The Template

The thank-you email itself should be short, sweet, and unique to the conversation you had.

Here’s a simple template you can use:

“Hi Melissa,

Just wanted to shoot over a quick note and say thank you for taking the time to hear my story. My favorite part of our chat was when you told me about the project developing the virtual try-on app and how you saw an increased conversion. That gets me really excited about all the innovation coming out of Company Z.

Once again, thank you and have a great week!

Best, Gerome.”

As you can see, it’s short, and that one specific snippet about the conversation proves I was listening and makes it personal.

And two quick tips: don’t worry if they don’t respond. Most of them won’t. It’s okay.

Also, type the email directly into the body. Don’t copy and paste from a Word doc, as it can cause weird formatting issues.

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The One-Week Follow-Up

Okay, that’s the immediate thank-you. Now, what happens when time passes and you hear nothing?

My rule for following up is that it’s okay to check in after one week of silence, unless they specifically gave you a different timeframe. Always follow their guidelines.

Your follow-up can be simple and professional. Something like:

“Hi Jack,

Hope you are doing well. I just wanted to check in and see if your team has made a decision about the [ROLE] I interviewed for last week. I want to reiterate my interest and see if there are any new updates.

I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you.”

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The Reality of Ghosting

Now, I want to talk about something that’s been happening a lot lately: ghosting.

It seems to be more and more rampant.

Ghosting is when you’ve gone through the interview process, sometimes even final rounds, and you just never hear back. You follow up after a week, nothing. Two weeks later, you follow up again, still nothing.

Just silence.

I want you to know you’re not alone in this.

Out of the 21 companies I did final rounds with over that year-and-a-half period, I was ghosted by four of them. I just had to assume I was rejected.

It happens. It is unfortunate, it is bad practice, and honestly, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth for those companies.

You put in all that effort, and the silence is disrespectful.

But here’s the hard advice: you have to learn to forget about it and move on.

It’s a reflection of their unprofessional process, not your value as a candidate. It just wasn’t meant to be.

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Your Task

So here’s your task for this post. It’s a simple one.

I want you to open a document and save the two templates we discussed today: the personalized thank-you note template and the one-week follow-up template.

Having them ready to go will remove stress and allow you to act quickly when you need to.

Following up is about being professional, persistent, and also protecting your own peace of mind.

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In the next post, we will talk about how to deal with the outcome when it’s not silence, but a direct “no.” And how to handle rejection.

I’ll see you there.

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Next up: How to handle rejection without losing your mind

Here is the complete career playbook (all 26 posts with real-world interview, resume, and career examples) for anyone who is pivoting roles, industries, about to graduate, stuck in their current path, not sure what to do next, etc.