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Zoë posted some great entries on the actual interview day, and we’ve talked about those after interview situations when you get rejected but don’t know why, don’t hear anything back at all, and finally receive a response but not an actual yes or no answer. Now on to one of the trickiest results … I had planned for the “We really like you … but not for this job” scenario to be next in line for the Après Interview series, and coincidentally (or maybe just to motivate me!), a reader wrote me last week and posed a specific situation that provides a great example of this scenario. Maybe you, too, have encountered a similar situation: I recently had an on campus MSFT interview and I find myself in a situation where I don’t know what my next step should be. From my perspective, the interviews went fairly well and the feedback that I got from my recruiter was positive. I was told that the group really liked me, thought my skills were good, a good MSFT cultural fit, etc. However, they felt I didn’t quite match up for this particular position (I totally agree here….I was as scared I would get the job as I was disappointed that I didn’t get it). I was asked to look on the jobs site for openings that interested me and send them to my recruiter and she would attempt to place me within another group. I could not have been happier (This made me think they really did like me because I would guess it would be very easy to just say "no"). I sent a number of job req id's that I would be interested in to the recruiter I was working with. A week or so later, I sent a follow-up email and got a response that somewhat puzzles me. The recruiter indicated that she had forwarded me where appropriate and hopefully things will pick up soon. So here is my question: Is this common a common scenario at MSFT? Should I keep touching base with the recruiter? I know that individual recruiters work for specific groups/areas and I don’t want to annoy the recruiter (too much) but at the same time I don’t want to loose any momentum. Do I just wait and see what happens? What step(s) would you suggest for a candidate to take in this situation? In recruiting, we call this the “future interest” candidate. We actually have two main types of future interest candidates. One is a candidate who is not quite “there” yet. This person has great skills but needs a little more work in one or two areas in order to be a slam dunk for a certain role. Often recruiters will work with this type of future interest candidate for months, even years, to help develop his or her skills. I will talk more about this scenario in my next Après Interview post. The other kind of future interest candidate is like this reader who wrote to me. In his situation, the particular job or group was not a match, but the recruiter felt he already had the skill set to be hired into another area of the company. Usually the next step in the process is what we recruiters call the “shopping” phase. It sounds a bit like the candidate is a commodity … and that’s somewhat true. Since recruiters usually work with a single client group or technology, the chances are if you weren’t a fit for a particular team, your recruiter will need to shop you to another team. Another team also means another recruiter. In this reader’s situation, I’d guess the recruiter sent his resume, interview feedback, and a paragraph as to why she felt he deserved a second chance to the recruiters who worked with his job codes of interest. Since the recruiter’s belated response to the reader was “hopefully things will pick up soon,” I’d guess she didn’t get any bites from her shopping. Due to the volume of resumes we receive, it’s sort of recruiter etiquette not to press the issue. When shopping a candidate, we’ll float the candidate’s information by the appropriate recruiters, and if no one responds, we need to wait another few weeks before attempting to shop again. Future Interest Reader – I would suggest you continue to stay in touch with your recruiter. I’d first ask her how often she suggests you check in. This will give you a gauge of how frequently she feels she can and should shop your candidacy. I usually attempt to actively shop a candidate for a month or two, and if I’m consistently having no luck, I’ll ask candidate to check in with me every three months with an update … or I’ll set a reminder on my calendar to check back with the candidate periodically. I’d hate to ever advise someone “wait and see,” but it’s very difficult to drive this type of situation … for both the candidate and the recruiter. Continue to update your recruiter on your status. Keep applying for openings. If you know employees at the company, ask your friends to submit your resume as a referral or tell Hiring Managers about how great you are. The good news is that somewhere in your candidate file sits some positive notes about your interview performance. In the future (be it tomorrow, six months, or three years from now), someone will read that file, and the feedback will help you. In the next month,Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 Key, Zoë and I are pulling a list of people from our database whose interviews and/or phone screens ended in a “future interest” status. We’ll eventually develop an e-mail campaign and reach out to all these future interest candidates who may have fallen through the cracks over the years. It happens. :( Future Interest Reader … Whatever you do, don’t give up the hope! I wish I had a more clear cut answer. Unfortunately, things may not “pick up soon,” but you are in a good situation when applying for roles with the company in the future. gretchen