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Respond back?

Posted by Ward on January 20, 2005

In Reply to: Respond back? posted by ESC 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.

Is courtesy dead? In business, I used to get tens of resumes each week in the mail. (We were in California, and after the Rose Bowl parade on TV, we would get a hundred each week for awhile) I looked at each one, and had a letter or note card to respond to each individual who sent one in for review. Perhaps we have gotten too busy and too self important to have some empathy and some respect for others. I always thought a simple response was appropriate and demonstrated the character and professionalism of my company.

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