“They Love Me, They Love Me Not”
The Business of Furniture - 7/13/16 Edition
Stephen Says Column

 Dear Stephen,

 
 I’ve been applying for new jobs. 
 I’ve mostly been applying directly to companies. Sometimes, I’ll have one interview and never, ever hear back from the person I interviewed with or the HR department. Other times, I send in my resume and never hear back at all.
 
 I don’t want to be too pushy after an interview, so how long is too long not to hear back from a prospective new employer after they’ve interviewed you? Sometimes the interviews last an hour, or an hour and a half, so I get the impression the company must be interested for them to spend that much time with me. I always send a professional follow-up letter, and in three separate cases now, after the interview, I’ve never heard a peep. Isn’t that unprofessional? Sometimes I’ll leave a voicemail after I’ve sent the follow-up letter. I’m just wondering when I should move on and when I should be more insistent on receiving an answer, whether it be yes or no.
 -Tired of Waiting

 Dear Tired of Waiting,

 
 I get this question all the time. It happens in all manners of interviewing. By that I mean whether you’re going directly to a company and meet with a hiring manager or even if the interview has been set up for you through a recruiter, sometimes you just don’t hear back. Heck, even headhunters like me don’t hear back from their clients on occasion.
 
 I’m not sure I can determine if it’s unprofessional or not to keep contacting a potential employer because so much of that sort of decision depends on individual circumstances. What I can do, though, is explain to you what I believe is happening in most cases, and hopefully that will help you decide on your own when it’s time to walk away.
 
 Here’s some back story to take the mystery out of interview feedback. First, it’s important for you to understand virtually every company you might be interviewing with today wants to make the person interviewing feel as good as pos- sible. Whether the individual you’re interviewing with likes you a lot, each interview will probably last about the same amount of time, 45 minutes to an hour. An hour and a half seems too long to me. So the amount of time you spend in an interview isn’t necessar- ily a good reflection of how well you did or how much the company likes you. Rather, it is more likely a product of the manager trying to be respectful and give you the maximum amount of time to learn about you. Too often, people confuse the amount of time they spend interviewing with how much they’re liked.
 
 Next, people who are turned down from jobs always think it’s about them. And guess what? It rarely is. It’s usually simply about someone better. Someone who has more experience, better relationships or whose chemistry might be a better fit with the culture of the company or individual who is interviewing them. I know it’s hard to not take these rejections personally, but there is a whole lot in this process that is outside of your control.
 
 Hiring companies have more and better choices today. It’s simply a fact. So the hiring process is usually double the amount of time you’re told. They’re not trying to trick you, they usually just underestimate how long the search will take them. Sometimes, you’re not a company’s first choice, so they try to stall. This is where a hiring manager sometimes can make a mistake in not following up to tell you they just need more time. Maybe they want to offer someone else the job first, and if that person doesn’t take the job, they will offer it to you. But the hiring company doesn’t want to tell you that because nobody wants their potential new employee to think they were a second choice. Make sense?
 
 As far as deciding when to give up and walk away from the company, it really depends on how badly you want the job. Frankly, I don’t think it’s so bad to be someone’s second choice, especially if you think it’s a great company or it will give you a chance to work with a great boss. So, while I can’t tell you definitively when to give up, I encourage candidates to backburner the potential new job in their mind, and remember the old adage that no news is good news … well … usually.
 
 Stephen
 
 You can send your workplace questions to Stephen at: StephenSays@bellow.press.
 
 Questions selected to be answered, will appear in this column. Please use the Subject: “Stephen Says for all emails. Stephen Viscusi is a bestselling author, television personality, and CEO of The Viscusi Group, global executive recruiters located in New York. Follow Stephen on Twitter: @WorkplaceGuru. Like Stephen on Facebook; and follow him on LinkedIn.