Response from thank you after CB Forum

[Anonymous User]

I sent a thank you email to a firm the day after the CB to one of the interviewing partners. The partner responded saying thank you for the note and good luck with the interview season and school. This freaked me a out a little. Is this just a standardized note, or is it a sign that I'm probably not going to be hearing good news from them? Or am I just reading too much into this?

[KMaine]

You are just reading too much into this. It could go either way. Good luck! (and by that I mean good luck).

[Anonymous User]

How many "decode the response to my thank-you note!" threads have been started up at this point?

General rule of thumb: It doesn't matter. People have reported personalized, lengthy responses and still got rejected. People have reported curt, generic responses and still got offers.

Exception to the rule (Something that happened to me this week during a callback): An associate I had lunch with sent me an e-mail telling me that he had a meeting with the hiring partner about me and the partner seemed to have a very favorable opinion. Does this mean an offer is on its way? Who knows. But at least it's more substantial than getting out my decoder ring and trying to read between the lines of a "cryptic" e-mail.

[TheSharklord]

Given that hire decisions are not made by one person, and that all partners who do CB interviews are often not even on the hiring committee, the partner who responded to you could have had no idea if you were getting an offer or not. Given that he felt compelled to send you a response, he had to say something. I imagine you would have rathered him saying "Good luck with the interviewing" as opposed to "I dunno if you're getting a job but it was nice to meet you"

[TheFriendlyBarber]

They should ding you for being so damn paranoid.

[Anonymous User]

What about no response to the thank you note?

Ding?

[Anonymous User]

What about no response to the thank you note?

Ding?

They're probably just too busy. Jesus.

[Anonymous User]

What about no response to the thank you note?

Ding?

you don't have to respond to a thank you note.

[KMaine]

Some people respond, some don't. Probably a function of personality. I know it is an anxious time, but try not to read too much into it.

[Anonymous User]

I sent a thank you email to a firm the day after the CB to one of the interviewing partners. The partner responded saying thank you for the note and good luck with the interview season and school. This freaked me a out a little. Is this just a standardized note, or is it a sign that I'm probably not going to be hearing good news from them? Or am I just reading too much into this?

got a few of these with offers after

[Anonymous User]

I got one from a partner saying that they hoped to see me at their firm next summer. I figure Ill get dinged soon. The replies dont mean jack.

[Anonymous User]

I got one from a partner saying that they hoped to see me at their firm next summer. I figure Ill get dinged soon. The replies dont mean jack.

I dunno, that at least seems to indicate that that partner will probably put in a very good evaluation for you. So that's a step above "nothing."

[Anonymous User]

To the OP- My friends/SO called me paranoid throughout OCI and callback season because of how freaked out I was by the thought of not getting an offer. That being said, even I think dissecting the wording of a thank-you note is unnecessarily paranoid. It's a horribly stressful process, but please shift your focus to school/journal/extracurriculars/whatever while you wait on getting your offers. I'm not trying to be mean or condescending at all, because I do understand the urge to analyze every single detail about your interviews & communication with the firms, but you will only drive yourself crazy. Good luck!

[Anonymous User]

I got one from a partner saying that they hoped to see me at their firm next summer. I figure Ill get dinged soon. The replies dont mean jack.

I dunno, that at least seems to indicate that that partner will probably put in a very good evaluation for you. So that's a step above "nothing."

Possibly. I should have clarified that the response was from the partner who I had the screener with, so I figured they already put in their 2 cents to get me the CB...along with half of my classmates.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not a partner, but I am an associate.

When we get thank-you notes, we can't really say anything that indicates whether or not you'll get an offer. Even if we liked you, you've been interviewed by several other people, and the others may not have liked you. Vice versa, we may not have been very positive in our evaluation, but if everyone else raved about you, you're probably in.

Now partners' votes of course have a lot more weight in the decision process than associates' opinions, but even a partner cannot know whether the one or two other partners you have met with had the same impression of you.

In other words, by the time the partner wrote back to you, he probably had his own opinion on whether or not you should be hired, but he probably did not yet know the collective verdict. And so he couldn't quite say "You'll hear from us soon" or "I hope you'll consider us" or "Good luck elsewhere." "Good luck with the process" is about the only thing he or she could reasonably say.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not a partner, but I am an associate.

When we get thank-you notes, we can't really say anything that indicates whether or not you'll get an offer. Even if we liked you, you've been interviewed by several other people, and the others may not have liked you. Vice versa, we may not have been very positive in our evaluation, but if everyone else raved about you, you're probably in.

Now partners' votes of course have a lot more weight in the decision process than associates' opinions, but even a partner cannot know whether the one or two other partners you have met with had the same impression of you.

In other words, by the time the partner wrote back to you, he probably had his own opinion on whether or not you should be hired, but he probably did not yet know the collective verdict. And so he couldn't quite say "You'll hear from us soon" or "I hope you'll consider us" or "Good luck elsewhere." "Good luck with the process" is about the only thing he or she could reasonably say.

And this is why TLS is 1,000% more useful than OCS. Thanks for chiming in.