The First Thing You Should Do After You Accept a Job

October 9, 2013

……………Congratulations, you got a job! Someone has finally recognized your talents after you’ve sucked up loads of time in interviews, not-getting-interviews, and not-getting-return-emails. You’re probably ready to absorb yourself in your new position, but make sure you take time to do one more thing; contact everyone who was helpful to you during your search.

Middle managers and senior executives receive plenty of requests from friends or friends-of-friends to chat with job seekers. When I take time to talk with job candidates, I invariably start pulling for the guy and want to see him find something he’ll enjoy. But more than half the time, I never hear again from that individual and wonder where he landed.

Contacting everyone who was helpful to you in your search process is one more opportunity to say thank you to the people who helped you along the way, and believe it or not, they really do want to know what happened to you. You can send a blanket update email to some but you should tailor individual emails or calls to those who were particularly helpful or ones with whom you’d like to build your relationship. You may even want to take some of the professionals out to lunch, which they will appreciate as gratitude without an agenda.

So enjoy your new job, but don’t forget the people along the way who helped you get there.