Tips for Job Seekers: Confirming Your Interest
The importance of confirming your interest when ending an interview.
When you find yourself thrust into the position of a job seeker, everything can feel overwhelming. In part 1 of this 3-part series, we covered how recency bias works and how to leverage it during the interview process to make yourself standout.
Today, we explore the important role confirming your interest plays when ending an interview.
For most candidates, interviewing is an unnatural, uncomfortable, and humbling experience. Because this is such a foreign process, many candidates make the incorrect assumption that an employer will be able to gauge their genuine level of interest in the opportunity. Often, this is not true. Why?
Body Language
Many candidates appear nervous without realizing it. You may fidget, fail to make eye contact, not smile, or cross your arms — all showing uncomfortableness, which can also be misinterpreted as disinterest.
Political Correctness
Inexperienced interviewers may mistake politeness or friendliness as genuine interest when in reality a candidate could be someone kicking tires and just interviewing to “see what is out there.”
Misjudgements
Inexperienced interviewers may also assume since you are employed, you are a ‘kicking tires’ candidate. Or that if someone is unemployed, then they must be interested.
Reality
Every employer we’ve ever met wants reassurance that the candidate they met with and are interested in is mutually interested. When we have follow-up meetings with our clients, they often ask us, “What did they say about us? Are they interested?” This is why confirming your interest is so important.
Who would ever want to invest time booking multiple interview steps only to discover the candidate was kicking tires or just “wanted to see what the offer would be” in some twisted strategy to “validate their worth” or to potentially get a counter offer and increase from their current employer.
The more senior the hiring stakeholder is, the more they value their time and want to spend it in high-value interviews. Emotionally, Founders and leaders want to engage with people who are as interested and excited about their mission as they are. They need to hear it back. And they will like you more as a candidate if they do!
How to Confirm Your Interest — Examples:
Interviewer: “It was great to meet you. Do you have any final questions?”
Job Seeker: “I could spend all day asking you questions, but what I want you to walk away with is my genuine interest in this opportunity. What is the next step in your process?”
Interviewer: “I really appreciate having met you today. We’ll get back to you in a few days.”
Job Seeker: “Thank you for your time. My interest remains high in this opportunity. Is there anything we didn’t discuss that would be critical for you to recommend I advance to the next step? What is that next step?”
In that last example, we added a close to the end. This is the best way to confirm interest and confirm that the interviewer got what they needed from the meeting to advance your candidacy.
As the interview wraps up, be upfront about your interest — it’s not just a formality but a strategic move. It dispels doubts and potentially sets you apart in a competitive cohort. So, when the interview wraps up, make it count by ensuring they know you’re genuinely invested and eager for the next step; don’t assume they know you are still interested in the opportunity, confirm it.
Author:
Heidi Ram is the Head of Product Practice at Martyn Bassett Associates. She has been a recruiter for the company for 20 years. During that time, she has been instrumental in shaping the evolution of the business, while building high-performing teams for some of the firm’s most valued clients.
Heidi is regarded as a thought leader and trusted advisor in the Toronto Product Management and Design community when it comes to industry insights, recruitment trends, salaries and the current talent landscape. Furthermore, Heidi is a board member of the Toronto Product Management Association (TPMA).
