I got a call last week.
"Scott, I haven't heard from the hiring manager, and they haven't reached out to my references. What do I do?"
My first response was to let it ride. At this point, they had done all the work they could have done, in my opinion, so focus on what's next and know that you did everything you could.
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Turns out, I was wrong.
He went on the full offensive attack, tracking down the hiring manager and requesting coffee.
"Don't be desperate, I said!"
I also thought there was no way in hell this guy would accept the coffee invite. Sure as shit, he did.
The hiring manager claimed he was going to call his references over the weekend. Monday came; he hadn't made a call yet.
My guy messaged again, "What the hell do I do, Scott?"
Leave it alone. Chalk it up to a loss. Apply to more jobs?
Nope, he tracked him down again. Two hours later, he got a job offer.
If this process taught me anything, it's that you can't predict this goofy-ass hiring market and you shouldn't listen to Scott 100% of the time.
Sometimes the difference between getting rejected and getting the offer is simply having the courage to knock on the door one more time.
I thought he was insane for tracking this guy down. After all, no hiring manager wants to hire anyone who may be desperate, but that wasn't the case. Turns out, if you're interviewing for a sales job, you should be persistent.
There is a lesson in that for all of us, and it has less to do with whether you should chase down every hiring manager for coffee and more to do with understanding the job you're actually trying to get. If you're interviewing for a sales role, business development role, leadership role, or anything where you're expected to create movement when nothing is happening, sitting quietly by the phone may actually be the worst demonstration of your ability.
We spend so much time trying to follow the imaginary rules of interviewing. Don't email too much. Don't follow up too quickly. Don't appear too interested. Don't bother the hiring manager. Don't look desperate. Meanwhile, nobody can actually tell you where these fucking rules came from or whether the person on the other side of the table even believes in them.
There is obviously a line between persistence and becoming a complete pain in someone's ass, but I think we dramatically overestimate how easy it is to cross that line. Most people aren't following up too much. Most people aren't following up enough because they are terrified that one additional email is somehow going to destroy their candidacy. Meanwhile, the person who gets the job might simply be the person who kept showing up.
That's especially true when persistence is directly connected to the work you're being hired to do. If you're telling me in an interview that you're relentless, that you know how to create urgency, that you don't take silence as an answer, and that you know how to move deals forward, then maybe the interview process is your first opportunity to prove it. You can't spend an hour telling someone you're a hunter and then disappear into the woods waiting for them to come find you.
The bigger career lesson for me was also a reminder that advice is exactly that: advice. You can ask your coach, your spouse, your friends, ChatGPT, your former boss, and ten people on LinkedIn what they think you should do, but eventually you have to make the decision yourself. I told this guy to leave it alone twice. He ignored me twice. Thank God he did.
Your career requires enough self-awareness to know when to listen to good advice and enough confidence to occasionally say, "Fuck it, I'm going anyway." Nobody knows exactly how the hiring manager is going to react. Nobody knows which follow-up is going to be the one that changes everything. Sometimes the difference between getting rejected and getting the offer is simply having the courage to knock on the door one more time.