Alison Green argues that thank-you notes were never a requirement and that hiring managers should not penalise candidates who skip them.
Interview etiquette is full of unwritten rules.
Send a thank-you note. Follow up after a few days. Dress a certain way. Apply before the deadline. Avoid saying the wrong thing.
But some of those rules may matter far less than employers think.
In a recent workplace advice column, Inc.com columnist Alison Green addressed three hiring and workplace questions, including whether candidates should be judged by whether they send a thank-you note after an interview.
Her answer is nuanced. Candidates can benefit from sending one, but employers should not treat it as a measure of suitability for the job.
Should candidates send interview thank-you notes?
Green advises candidates to send thank-you notes, provided they are thoughtful, personalised and relevant rather than generic.
The reason is practical. Even if the note has little connection to someone’s ability to perform the job, it can still influence a hiring manager’s perception.
But that does not mean employers should use it as a screening criterion.
Green argues that, outside a small number of roles where relationship-building is directly relevant, there is little connection between someone’s ability to do a job and whether they remember to send a note afterward.
She also points to the equity issues surrounding the tradition.
Candidates come from different backgrounds and have varying levels of exposure to job-search conventions. Some may have been taught that a thank-you note is essential. Others may never have encountered the expectation.
That means penalising someone for skipping it can introduce an irrelevant advantage into the hiring process.
What should HR teams do?
Green suggests HR professionals educate hiring managers rather than quietly allowing the practice to influence decisions.
If a company still believes thank-you notes matter, HR could tell candidates upfront that hiring managers value them, ensuring everyone has the same information.
But the stronger solution is to help managers recognise that interview etiquette is not the same thing as job competence.
What about a board member who records everything?
Green also addressed a workplace situation involving a board member who regularly documents his life on Instagram and tags colleagues and staff members.
The problem escalated when the board member secretly recorded employees having informal conversations after an officially recorded workplace session and distributed the recording to other staff and board members.
He then pressured a social media intern to publish the recordings alongside the official company video.
Green’s advice is direct: someone with authority needs to tell him that the recording was made without the employees’ permission and should not be shared.
The person should also be asked to confirm that the recording has been deleted.
Set clear recording rules.
Green recommends establishing explicit recording policies at meetings and events.
If there has already been a problem, organisers should clearly state at the beginning of future meetings whether recording is permitted and how recordings may be used.
They could also specifically ask the board member to confirm that he is not recording, given the previous incident.
But Green’s larger point is that these measures are essentially workarounds for a deeper problem.
If someone with organisational authority repeatedly ignores boundaries, that person needs to be held accountable rather than forcing everyone else to design increasingly elaborate rules around their behaviour.
Should companies interview candidates on a rolling basis?
Green also weighed in on another hiring question: whether companies should interview candidates as applications arrive or wait until the application deadline has passed.
She strongly favours reviewing applications as they come in.
Waiting several weeks to examine the entire applicant pool can cause employers to lose strong candidates who accept other offers before the company even contacts them.
A rolling approach can help employers identify exceptional candidates earlier and begin conversations before competitors do.
But it requires employers to have a clear understanding of what a genuinely strong candidate looks like.
Without that benchmark, hiring teams risk interviewing too many early applicants and later discovering that the bar should have been higher.
Should job postings mention rolling interviews?
Green says employers do not have to disclose their interview process.
However, she considers it smart to do so.
Candidates may otherwise assume they have until the application deadline to submit their materials. If the company hires someone before that date, qualified applicants may never get the opportunity to be considered.
A simple statement can solve that problem:
“We’re interviewing candidates on a rolling basis, so if you’re interested, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.”
The bigger lesson for employers
All three questions point to the same principle.
Hiring processes accumulate traditions that can eventually be mistaken for evidence of competence.
A thank-you note may demonstrate courtesy. Applying early may demonstrate awareness of timing. A polished interview may create a positive impression.
But none should automatically become a proxy for whether someone can actually do the work.
The strongest hiring systems distinguish between signals that genuinely predict performance and rituals that merely feel professional.
That distinction matters not only for candidates. It determines how much talent an organisation accidentally filters out.
Source: Inc
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