What To Do After Sending Resume

by Stephanie Blye

So you have found the job you have dreamed of, you have built an exceptional resume and you have sent it to the employer via e-mail. Not the game of "waiting" starts.

After having sent your CV, you might think all you have to do is wait and hope the potential employer contacts you. Well, this is actually a big mistake! In fact, you must choose the right moment and the right way to do the following things:

1. Interviewers recommend you should wait a week.

The ideal waiting period after the CV has been sent is a week. This thing has been confirmed by the majority of employers (HotJobs estimates 53% of them). However, some employers prefer you contact them only after a couple of days.



21% of employers state that you should wait less than a week since having sent the CV. Of course, there are some others which would rather have you contact them after more than a week (8% state that the ideal waiting period is that of two weeks). Then there are some employers who would have you wait until they contact you. That's 19% of them.

So what would be the best option in these terms? Wait for a week, the way the majority of the employers prefer.

2. Follow-up with a short e-mail.

The e-mail is the perfect means of contacting the company you have applied in because you can remind the employer that you have applied for a certain job and you can even send your CV once more, without sounding too insistent.

So after a week since you have applied, send the employer an e-mail. Here's what that e-mail should contain:

• write your entire name and the title of the job you have applied for;
• repeat, in a professional manner, the reasons for which you have applied for that job and what your interests and qualifications are;
• attach the Cv to this message, in order for the employer not to search for it among the old e-mails;
• include your full name and the title of the document containing the CV;
• double check the content of the e-mail and whether the CV was attached or not before sending it.

3. Contact the employer (company) by phone.

• If you preferred the phone call to the e-mail, then you might want to rehears a little before actually calling the employer himself. Repeat once or twice what you want to tell him.
• Be short and straight to the point - introduce yourself and remind him you have sent a CV for a specific job and mention the title of the job as well. You may ask whether he got the CV or not and whether he is still recruiting other people for the same job.
• Supposing when you call you get the answering machine, you might as well try to call again later on and talk to the employer (of the Hiring Manager) in person.
• Try to keep the conversation short and don't call them again and again in order to determine them to contact you back - you will only make them mad. Nearly half the employers (47%) declare they are annoyed by candidates who are constantly calling them.

4. Should you just send the CV once more, without sending an e-mail or call them?

A couple of weeks have passed since you have sent your CV for that job and there's still no answer from your potential employer? Well, in this situation, you should NOT send your CV once more, hoping this time you will have more success. Most of the times, employers keep the CVs in a database and there's a big possibility that they may observe you have sent it twice and may think you have forgotten (thus consider you shallow).

The only situation you should send a resume again to the same company is if you apply for a different job from the first one. If this is not the case, just contact them via e-mail or telephone.