Jordan Hudgens: Once you've gone through that process you may think that your job is over and you are simply waiting to get hired but you're not quite done yet. And so I want to talk now about your follow up etiquette and if you could talk about some of the things that you should do after you've completed that interview.

Stephanie Conley: Absolutely. So a thank you note is extremely important, never underestimate the power of a thank you. On that note, it should contain any questions that you didn't fully answer. You need to go back and research those questions, then answer those questions.

You also need to thank them for their time, they're busy. Chances are you know they're a dev manager if it's a technical interview and they're not professional interviewers.

Jordan: Makes sense.

Stephanie: And lastly in that initial thank you letter, you need to let them know if you want to continue along with the process or if you'd like to take yourself out the running.

Jordan: So during this process should the thank you note, be written or emailed?

Stephanie: It should be emailed.

Jordan: Okay that's nice and easy.

Stephanie: Yeah, this is 2018. It should be emailed and it should be emailed by the end of that business day.

Jordan: Oh so right away.

Stephanie: Exactly, if you do miss that window make sure you get it to them by 9 am. By the time that they're sitting down.

Jordan: So for some of the things you've mentioned. Any follow up questions or answering any questions that maybe you feel like you didn't answer as well as you could have? Listing if you're still interested in the position, thanking them for their time. Is there anything else they should include or should that really be it?

Stephanie: You can ask about the next steps if you didn't ask about them in the interview. You need to know what's going on if you don't know the interview process ask them what the full interview process looks like.

Jordan: Now after you've sent this follow up email do you send any other correspondence after that? So if you haven't heard from them in one week or two weeks do contact them again?

Stephanie: Absolutely, you should. So thank you letters say that this interview took place on Monday. So you send the thank you letter end of Business Day Monday. By that Thursday you should follow up and again thank them for their time and let them know that you're still interested and just let them know that you're looking forward to the next steps.

Jordan: Perfect.

Stephanie: After that first week, don't correspond more than once a week.

Jordan: Good idea.

Stephanie: That is too much. So the following week send a follow-up e-mail either on Tuesday or Thursday, those are the best days to actually get through to someone because they're not scrambling. And then if you still don't have a decision set a reminder every two weeks to let them know that you are still interested in the position and that you're checking in and you look forward to hearing from them.

Jordan: That makes sense. So this is our last guide in this course. What are some final notes or anything that we haven't covered that you really would like to impart as some key takeaways?

Stephanie: Make sure you have a list of questions for the company formulated before you go in that interview. Those questions should be formulated around what's important to you, and if what's important to you is the tech stack and how the team works, that's how you should ask your questions. That's where your questions should stem from.

If you are looking for career growth within that company ask about what their career growth plans are, ask them if they mentor. And then makes sure that you get contact information, you can't send a thank you without contact information.

Jordan: Makes sense. And I want to finish off with just a story that I've seen happen and if you remember anything from what I've said, I want this to be it. And that is whenever you're going into this part of the job hunt. If this is your first developer job it is very natural to feel intimidated to feel like you're not ready.

I want you to be completely cognizant of the fact that everybody feels that way. If I were to leave this job right now and go out and try to find a job I would feel that way and I've been doing this for over 15 years. Everyone has a sense of that imposter syndrome at some level or another.

So one of the key takeaways is to have confidence. I once heard this story and this is accurate but I can't give any names, but there was a student who went to a code school. It wasn't our code school but it was in this general vicinity here in Utah. And after one month of the three-month program, he felt like he had been taught everything he needed to know to get a job.

So he quit the code school after 1 month and he went out and applied for positions he had so much confidence his greatest skill was being confident that he got a job right away. It was made very clear immediately that he had no idea where he is talking about because he had only learned like Hello World and some very basic things from a technical perspective.

But from what I've heard he has gotten about three or four positions all developer jobs all completely just based on the fact that he went in with a lot of confidence and that's such a rare thing for junior developers to have, that he completely tricked the people that were hiring them.

Don't do that, you need to have the technical skill. There's a reason why he kept on being fired it's because he didn't actually know the things that everyone thought that he did. But there is a little bit of a lesson there which is can you imagine if you had that level of confidence combined with the technical skill?

So if you can build the applications but you go in with that confidence you're going to be just much much better shape than someone else. Just imagine a scenario where you switch places with the interviewer and meet two people who have completely identical skills, they are both junior developers, they're both from code schools, both have very similar skills.

And then imagine one of them who seems very unsure of them-self and they're not exactly sure on what they should be doing and they don't really exude a lot of confidence and then you take the other one who seems very confident and they may not be able to go out and do everything that you ask them to do right away.

But you can see from how confident they are, that they're going to figure it out. The more confident developers are going to be the ones that get hired and that's the natural way that it works just in life. And so that's one thing I want to leave you with, is make sure that when you're going out there that you do have confidence because that is going to be a key to being able to impress the people that you're communicating with.