Follow-up OR Forget About It

If you're merely posting your résumé online for open positions on job sites like CareerBuilder or Indeed.com, you're not effectively job hunting. As a recent college graduate, you should be reaching out to every possible contact you can think of. Then, after you speak with your various contacts and notify them that you are on the job hunt...

Follow-up, Follow-up, Follow-up!

I'll give you a prime example. While searching for my current position, a former educator of mine (one of my contacts) told me to e-mail a friend of hers, who was in my field of choice, to see if he knew of any available positions.

At this point in my search I was fairly down on my luck, but I thought, "I have nothing to lose," and I emailed the gentleman on a Tuesday afternoon. A week went by and I never received a response. My first gut reaction was, "eh, he's not worth my time." My second, more rational reaction was, "Well, perhaps he just didn't get the e-mail or maybe he was just too busy to respond." So, I wrote this man a FOLLOW-UP e-mail.

Within three minutes of sending the follow-up e-mail, my cell phone rang. It was my former educator's friend. He informed me that he had read my initial e-mail, but had a crazy day that Tuesday and thus, forgot to respond. He asked me to come to his office and meet with him right away. I did. Thanks to him, two weeks later I got my current job.

Remember, just because the e-mail you send or the voice-mail you leave for someone is on YOUR priority list, doesn't mean it's on THEIR priority list. In fact, it most likely is not. However, you can greatly increase your chances of getting someone's attention by politely following-up with them.

Lesson Learned: If you don't follow-up, you might as well forget about it.