You’ve posted your resume to over a hundred job boards and company websites and you have yet to receive a response and you don’t know what to do. If this sounds familiar than this blog is not for you. I can’t help you get a quicker response if this is your strategy. Seriously, I can’t.

You’ve networked your way into a position that blends well with your skills and experience. You’ve interviewed and you feel it went well. The people you interviewed with gave you the right ‘buying’ signals. The process ended on a positive note. And then………crickets.

You’ve made several calls to follow up.

You’ve heard nothing.

You’ve sent a couple of “checking in” emails.

Nothing.

Zip.

And the silence is deafening.

I don’t know why companies don’t communicate better with perspective employees. I do know that they have any number of reasons for why they don’t, rarely thinking – “is this the way we would want to be treated?” It seems that professional courtesy is not a component of a lot recruiting strategies.

So what can you do?

Well, first you have to be at peace with what you can and can’t control and take every advantage of the former. Here is how a friend, Rob Henry, a marketing executive and one of the good guys, does it.

“I’ve left several messages for you and have not heard back. If interest has cooled [regarding…], I completely understand, and it sure won’t hurt my feelings. Just let me know either way so I’ll know how to proceed.”

Does this work? You betcha! Sometimes the answer is positive; sometimes it’s not; and sometimes it contains information as to what’s next in the process. The point is that you have to ask the question to get an answer. And a lot of us don’t know how to ask the question.

And knowing, even if the answer is NO, is better than not knowing.