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[history grrrl]

Sorry for the duplication; I know there are older threads about this, but I can't find them. I'm embarrassed to say I thought those threads were a bit silly; now I know better.

I just got back from a wonderful campus visit where I was treated like an honored guest. Most of the department faculty (about 15 people) attended my teaching demo and research talk/interview. I also had extensive one-on-one contact with three faculty (including the search committee chair and department chair), and meals that involved five others (one of whom I spoke with for a short time one-on-one). The rest were just introductions.

First question: who gets thanked? I want to send notes to each of the three key people (they were all helpful in different ways). But what about the five who spent significant "group" time with me? I don't want them to feel slighted, but would a fourth note directed to the entire faculty suffice? Or should I skip that altogether?

Second: If I send these by courier (mail will take ages), they won't arrive till Monday - almost a week after my interview. Should I just send email instead? Or an initial email to the search committee chair, to be shared with the department, and the separate notes as a follow-up?

Thanks in advance.

[%sig%]

[Second half]

I, too, had a similar interview experience.  I chose to send thank you emails to everyone who spent one-on-one time with me, including the graduate student who escorted me from place to place.  I did not send a blanket email to the department, nor did I send to the graduate students who came as a group to "informally" talk with me.  They and those people who came to my job talk were thanked in person at the time.  I don't know if it influenced any decisions but I got the job offer within two weeks and have accepted.  Best of luck to you!

[CapnCrunch]

In these tough economic/academic times, thank-you notes are essential and show you have the social skills to be a caring and considerate colleague.

Thank every faculty member that you shared significant time with, from committee members to those that sat with you during lunch, dinner or just breezed in during the job talk.  

Once back home from the interview, send e-mails as quickly as possible to show you are still interested in the position, school, research, students, etc. If you are no longer interested, still send thank-you notes with a general comment about how nice it was to interview for the position. You never know when and where you will meet up with these faculty members again and how they might remember your thoughful reply and ability to follow through.

Consider sending the department secretary or coordinator that scheduled your day  a personal thank-you note too (this can be viewed as "sucking up" but in my department these people are essential and do have the ear of the chair).

IMO. the reason this thread gets repeated so often is because it is one of the few social graces still unspoken about in the uncivilized process of academic hiring.

Good luck.

[no longer Ph.D.]

You can also send an email "thank you" to every person you met with and personalize each one. That is becoming a fairly common thing to do, and is just as nice (not to mention timely).

[ALS]

I have a similar interview experience last Monday.  I was treated extremely well by everyone in the academic library where I interviewed, so when I came back I sent e-mail messages to everybody with whom I had one-on-one interaction.  The only exception was the search committee members and the dean to whom I sent personalized, hand-written notes telling them how grateful I was for the opportunity to interview there and what a nice reception I received.  However, those notes were mailed on Wednesday and will not arrive until next Monday.  This morning I panicked a bit and sent a blanket e-mail to the search committee as well.  This may not be the optimal solution given that two days have been lost, but hopefully it will still serve.  My biggest fear is to appear ungrateful and unappreciative of such gracious hosts.  

So it is still a dilemma: e-mail thank-you notes vs. paper ones...

[Search Committee Member]

The only one that will have any impact on the decision is the one to the chair of the department or the chair of the search committee, which you should send at once by e-mail. It is late, late, late in the hiring season. We want to know if you're really still interested in the job, or if you were putting on such a pleasant and relaxed performance because you already know you have an offer elsewhere so you have nothing to lose with us. Time is of the essence. We will almost certainly be meeting to rank our candidates this week, not next week, if you were the last interview. Get the thank you to the chair by e-mail at once. If you want to be polite and fancy to everyone, go ahead (may make for good relations if you get the offer and so forth), but the practical reason for thank-you notes is to signal your continued interest in the position. Do it by e-mail NOW.

[The last word]

Send a personal thank you note to everyone you met.  Email or handwritten does not matter.  Try to think of something unique to say to each person.  It will make a difference.  People will mention it to each other.  You'll appear thoughtful, interested, motivated and thorough.

[Another Search Committee Membe]

I agree with Search Committee Member that you should get thank you emails out to the chair as soon as possible, but I also think you should thank everyone. That means every faculty member or student who met with you and the administrative support that arranged your visit. I disagree with Search Committee Member that the only impact is on the chair.

The last several people I interviewed did not bother to send anyone a thank you. This wouldn't prevent someone from getting the job but it does not leave a good impression.

[Koko]

I'm still amused by the different perspectives on this.

I was told over and over again by my mentors to not waste time writing any sort of thank you notes. Of course, I still dropped a few emails as thanks to chairs of the search committees at places that I liked, but besides that, I didn't send them out. And yes, I got several offers.

Individual differences, I guess.

[dubliners099]

Go with snail mail. E-mail may seem too instant (or even thoughtless) considering the amount of time and money a department spent on your interview. I always send thank you cards to not only department heads, deans, chairs, VPs, but also to everyone on the committee. I buy three or four different boxes of thank-you cards and keep them on hand. I can also then send slightly different ones to people who I know are in constant contact with each other. I have seen my thank-you notes on bulletin boards and standing on desks later... something that can't be done with an e-mail message.

[%sig%]

[Roxie]

I sent notes by snail mail (within a week of the interview) to the dept chair and search committee chair as well as three members of the search committee that took me to dinner and spent significant time with me. I did not send notes to all members of the committee or others in the dept that I met one-on-one during the interview - only those that went out of their way, etc. I didn't want to send notes to everyone for fear of sucking up. Thank those you truly want to thank. Be sincere. It comes through.

[history grrrl]

Thanks for all the great - though often contradictory! - advice; I'll draw on it liberally in fashioning my response. A note about department secretaries; since I was a clerical worker for many years (and even coordinated an academic job search once), I consider thanking them a top priority.

Thoughts about the Dean? Our meeting simply involved her spelling out salary, benefits, working conditions, tenure/promotion requirements, etc. - no discussion of university mission or anything else. I'm inclined not to include her because it was clearly pro forma.

[%sig%]

[anon]

history grrrl , thanks for bringing this topic to life. I need this advice as well so I appreciate your generating these good responses. During my last service, I did send a thank you tol the dean - it was pro forma until she noticed that I did a masters at an urban institution in a working class city where her grandparents had lived - generated a good, informal discussion about how the immigrant groups to that city had changed over the decades - I felt that deserved a thank you - she remained an advocate during my tenure there.

[history grrrl]

Okay, here's what I'm going to do based on everyone's great feedback:

1. I've sent an email to the search committee chair, saying what a lovely experience I had and how interested I am in the position (and asking him to share this with the department).

2. Then, I'll send email to the two other people I spent one-on-one time with, the four who went to lunch with me, the one other person at dinner, and the secretary. It's a lot of emails -- 8! -- but I'm composing them quickly and I really do have something special to say to each of them.

3. Then I'll send a handwritten note to the search committee chair, who organized a dinner party at his home and prepared a fantastic meal (and whose two-year-old claimed my lap for a good chunk of the pre-dinner socializing period!).

I cannot believe I didn't do this for my previous campus visits (except in letters to the search committee chairs when I was sending my receipts). Thank goodness for this discussion forum!

[%sig%]

[five]

history grrrl wrote:

> 3. Then I'll send a handwritten note to the search committee
> chair, who organized a dinner party at his home and prepared a
> fantastic meal (and whose two-year-old claimed my lap for a
> good chunk of the pre-dinner socializing period!).

If the chair's family was involved in the dinner in their home (it sounds like they were), it might be a nice touch to mail this note to their home address (you can easily google it or use whitepages.com to find this if you didn't notice the address while you were there.)  I did this when a dept chair and his wife hosted me and much of the dept in an interview I had, and it seemed to be well-received.  I worried at first it that using their home address might make me appear stalker-like, but I was in their home, so it's not like the address was a secret.  And I think that such personal hospitality deserves a personal response of gratitude.

[%sig%]