phrases, sayings, idioms and expressions at

Respond back?

Posted by ESC on January 19, 2005

In Reply to: Respond back? posted by Bob on January 19, 2005

: : : : : Can you tell me the correct phrase to use to ask someone to respond back to you. I am job hunting and I want to contact the hiring manager and ask him/her to please respond back to me and let me know if I am still being considered. (Most times they just ignore you.) I don't want to sound like I am begging, but I also don't want to sound too forceful. I think the phrase is "please give me the courtesy of a response." I'm stuck on the verb - is "give" correct? or is it "provide"?

: : : : : Thanks in advance for any help.

: : : : In the US language used in these situations change rapidly rather like fads. Ten years ago we would have said "I will contact you [then giving specifics]. We would "I am looking forward to working with you." But we would never give the hiring manager instructions to contact us.

: : : You can say "I look forward to hearing from you." A personnel director probably has a practice in place already, anyway, and either responds to letters of application or doesn't, whatever the applicant says.

: : I may be nit-picking here, but is this proper? I thought it shoud be "respond to me" not "respond *back* to me".

: I get about 2000 résumés a year, and there's absolutely no way I'm going to spend the time replying to any but a tiny fraction of them. I'm especially annoyed with the jobseekers who telephone a week after mailing their résumé to "make sure it arrived." One of the people in our office asks such people, "Did you put a stamp on it?" Pause. "Then it arrived."

I am one of those people who calls and checks. And in one instance it had not. So I sent a second one. Didn't get the job though.

© 1997 – 2024 Phrases.org.uk. All rights reserved.