Should You Send a Thank You Note After an Interview?

The simple answer is yes. (if you want to)

There is very little downside to sending a short note after an interview. A quick “thanks for the meeting today, I appreciated the conversation and look forward to hearing about next steps” is polite, professional, and rarely hurts your chances.

So far, so uncontroversial.

Where this topic gets messy is not on the candidate side, but on the hiring side.

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Recently, I responded to a post from someone who openly stated they were rejecting otherwise excellent candidates purely because those candidates did not send a thank you note after interview. This wasn’t a misunderstanding or a throwaway comment. They clarified their position several times. No thank you note, no job.

What they did not respond to, however, was a fairly simple question. Whether they themselves had sent “thank you for your time” messages to the candidates they interviewed.

That silence matters.

Because what often gets framed as a discussion about professionalism is actually a discussion about power, perspective, and empathy.

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As a recruiter, I will always advise candidates that sending a thank you note is a good idea. It costs very little effort and can reinforce interest and courtesy. But I will never describe it as mandatory. Not because politeness does not matter, but because hiring decisions should be based on signals that actually correlate with performance, judgement, and impact in the role.

And this is where the wagging finger comes out.

If you are rejecting candidates for not sending a thank you note, for having a Hotmail address, or for submitting a resume that runs over two pages, then you are not being discerning. You are being arbitrary.

Worse, you are confusing your own preferences with universal standards.

Job searching is already cognitively and emotionally taxing. Candidates are navigating uncertainty, rejection, financial pressure, and self doubt, often all at once. Layering on hidden rules and unspoken etiquette tests does not raise the quality bar. It simply filters for people who look, sound, and behave most like you.

That is not the same thing as hiring the best person.

This behaviour often comes wrapped in language about “standards” or “attention to detail”, but what it usually signals is something else. A lack of empathy, and a belief that your way of seeing the world is the default setting for everyone else.

Sometimes this crosses into what I can only describe as main character syndrome. The idea that every interaction exists primarily as a reflection of you, your expectations, and your preferences, rather than as a meeting point between two humans with different contexts and starting positions.

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Here is the reality. Someone can be thoughtful, capable, self aware, and highly effective in a role, and still not send a thank you note. Not because they are rude or careless, but because they were raised differently, advised differently, or simply focused on the substance of the conversation rather than the ceremony around it.

Good hiring requires curiosity. It requires asking what a behaviour actually tells you, not what it makes you feel.

So yes, candidates should send thank you notes. It is sensible advice.

But hiring managers and recruiters should also take a long, honest look at the rules they enforce, the assumptions they make, and whether those rules genuinely serve the outcome they claim to care about.

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If you want better hires, start by being a better interpreter of human behaviour.

And if you are tempted to reject someone for failing a test they did not know they were sitting, pause and ask yourself a harder question.

Are you protecting standards, or just protecting comfort.

Be better.

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