LANDING A JOB

How long does it take before you should get a call back after your first interview.

Alice Brown
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

between 1 and 7 days

expert
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Most will want a second interview before any hiring decision. If you're in line for that you should hear within a week. They generally only call back 3 people for the second chat.

If not, the game's still not over. They will hang on to your resume until they get someone actually in the door. Not just after they've made an offer or even after they have gotten someone to accept their offer. Anything can happen to make that prospective new-hire change his/her mind.

So they need a second choice and a third and a fourth. They'll generally keep about 6 people on hold, often more because if the first choice bags it after several weeks have gone by, it's quite likely some of their other choices have since become unavailable. I've seen (when the job market was good a few years back) where they eventually settled for the #6 choice.

jack
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

It part, it depends on the market for that job -- both the type of job, and the geographic region.  If you're in a major metro area, or interviewing for a type of job with lots of candidates, it could take two or three weeks to narrow down the massive field of candidates and pick a winner.  If you're in the boondocks, or you've interviewed for a specialty position with only a few local candidates, then I'd expect to hear something in a few days.

Another factor is whether you were the first choice.  The first choice might have taken a week to reject, or accepted and then backed out, yielding the podium to you a few weeks later.

A final factor is whether the company is considerate enough to give you a bad news callback.  Many aren't.

[oh, and fix your caps lock.  you'll never get callbacks if you're prone to yelling or thinking your problems deserve more attention than other people's problems.]

Bopp
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Preferably, you should have asked this question to the interviewer...

oh my
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

I got a job once a couple _months_ after I interviewed for it.  I kept calling once a week to ask about it, and I guess they hired me because they were sick of me calling.  :)

Kyralessa
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

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