Follow-up to keep your network and search alive

You sent an outreach request and haven’t heard back.
✅ Use the 3B7 practice from The Two Hour Job Search , for following up on an initial outreach email. It is a great way to keep this part of your search simple, and focus your attention on other things. In short, for target companies, you write an outreach message to one person at a time. If you don’t hear back in 3 business days, try someone else. In 7 business days, send your email to the original person again, creating one more opportunity for them to reply.

You had conversations at any event, or an informational interview and want to stay in touch
✅ Send a thank you note, an important habit to cultivate now, to the people who generously share their time and insights with you.You don’t have to keep in touch with everyone you talked to; use your judgement for those you connected with well. If you’ve already sent a thank you note, a status update based on something from your conversation is a good idea. Some examples include: you took a suggestion of theirs and want to update, you are starting a job or internship, you heard something in a class that made you think of the conversation with them.

You had an interview, sent a thank you note, and haven’t heard back from the company.
✅ Check out this part of our site focused on responding skillfully after an interview.

✅ Send a status update.
Here is a worksheet you can use to craft a message or thank you note. Your informational interviews should be generating plenty of interesting suggestions that further your search and professional development. If they are not, it is a cue that you should make some changes. (Please connect with a coach to troubleshoot together!) Read your meeting notes and take time to investigate their recommendations. After you follow through on some of their suggestions, you have got something interesting to write back about that accomplishes a few things. As a student, you also have cyclical opportunities to send a status update based on the academic year & your job search. Examples include: end of each semester, accepting/starting a job or internship, working on a class project related to your discussion, and completing your program. Connect your status update back to the conversation like if something they shared helped you prepare well for an interview.

✅ Ask if they are active on any professional social media or publishing platforms and follow them.
You could even set up a Google alert. Simply reading the posts of a person you admire has lots of learning benefits, and finding the right opportunity to comment, ask a question, or make a remark based on your own specialization is even better. You will also begin to see who else they connect and communicate with, potentially leading to future informational chats or someone else to follow online.

✅ Write a note if something in your day-to-day life reminds you of them.
From time to time, you will think about someone you have met. This might be prompted by the news, a memory, something you learn, or anything else. Use the genuine cue to write a few sentences to say hello. This would look like: a sentence or two to share the reason for writing, a few sentences updating them about you, and perhaps a question about them. A key to being able to do this well is having a system in place where you track who you’ve connected with, including notes about interactions.