Thank-you email after an interview: Templates and examples

Writing a thank-you letter or email after an interview is common practice in the US & UK. After a job interview, you take the time to kindly thank your interviewer again in writing and therefore reinforce the good impression you hopefully left. What does this kind of thank-you email look like?

It is never wrong to attract attention through friendliness and politeness – not in everyday life and certainly not in the application process. A short, a nice message to say thank you for the job interview brings three advantages:

• You leave a positive impression: With the message, you send positive signals afterwards and might cause the decision makers to remember you well.
• You remind them of you: You will remember that even experienced personnel managers lose track of many applications. You will stand out from the crowd with a friendly email after the interview.
• You’re reinforcing your interest: An additional, unsolicited message proves your commitment to employment. If you also refer to specific topics of conversation, you prove your attention.

Since people are often reluctant or too shy to follow up after the interview with a thank-you email, you may give yourself a competitive edge by choosing to send one. In contrast to other applicants, you are using an additional means to leave a positive impression – if you get it right, of course.

When writing a thank-you message, the right moment plays an important role. The message shouldn’t reach the decision-makers too early or too late, otherwise the e-mail loses its effect:

• Too early: If you report on the same day, you appear overzealous on the one hand and miss the chance to bring yourself back to memory on the other. Within a few hours, you may have been forgotten again.
• Too late: If your thank-you message does not arrive until they have almost made their decision, friendliness no longer plays a role. Maybe you’re not even in the race anymore. Besides, the late thanks doesn’t seem authentic anymore.

One or two days have proven to be a good measure of time. If the message reaches your contacts within this time frame, you will make a good impression. It shows that you are still thinking about the conversation and therefore appears honest.

Your thank-you email after the interview should be honest and sympathetic. Obtrusiveness in particular can damage a good impression, which you actually want to underline with your letter. Therefore, please refrain from making any demands in the message. Don’t tell your contact person that they have to make a decision about you or that they should speed up the decision-making process.

You shouldn’t sound too chummy either. A friendly thank you is enough. If you sound like you’re trying to score brownie points, your contact person will notice and may take it negatively. Rejection of both your message and your whole application would be the most likely outcome.

Anyway, you have to be brief. Under no circumstances should you provide an excessively long letter of thanks for additional work. You can assume that the personnel managers have a lot to do during the application phase anyway. If they then have to work their way through an overflowing email, this will certainly not create a good atmosphere. With a few friendly sentences, on the other hand, you can improve your mood and collect bonus points.

In order to be able to thank you at the right place, you should first find out the correct contact details of your contact person. Especially when it comes to e-mail traffic, communication usually takes place through a personnel department general address. Therefore, use the conversation on site and ask for a business card at the end. In this way, you can reach the right person directly.

Also, don’t forget that this message is also part of your application. Therefore, the message must be absolutely error-free. Since a thank-you email only covers a few sentences, any spelling, grammar or wording mistakes are very serious.

It can be difficult to strike the right note. That’s why we have put together several examples for you. You can use these samples as a starting point for your e-mail after the interview. Make sure you individualise your message!

In the subject line, you make the content and context of your e-mail clear, and in the first sentence, you already get to grips with the occasion. Afterwards, you confirm your interest in the employment and pick up a concrete point from the conversation. This will show your contact person that you have thought about the conversation. Finally, you refer to your telephone number and signal your willingness to communicate.

With this sample, we assume that you are replying to an e-mail. This means that the previous conversation is still under the new message and helps the recipients to classify it. This example is much more informal. You will find the way of addressing the recipients in the interview. If, for example, you used formal language there, you should continue this throughout your extended communications. If you have had the interview with several people, also address each person individually (hierarchically sorted) at the beginning of the thank-you email.

If a specific topic was discussed in more detail during the interview, you are welcome to return to it in the thank-you e-mail. For example, you can refer to a specialist article to prove your knowledge and express your motivation. However, you should only do this if you really have a decent contribution to make. The recipient can then still decide whether to follow the link.

Short, friendly and containing all pertinent information: In this template you quickly get to the point and go into what you liked best. You only praise your interlocutor indirectly and therefore do not become unpleasant. Here, too, you offer yourself for further conversations. Your contact person also has the telephone number in your application documents. However, if you include it in the email again, they won’t have to search for it.

The risk of discrediting the complete application with a thoughtless message is not unrealistic – there’s no question that it will happen. However, if you skilfully avoid dangerous pitfalls, you will bring yourself and your application to the forefront with a friendly thank-you email after the interview.