How Soon is "Too Soon" to Follow Up?

Of all the questions I've heard during my job search and networking, by far the most common is, "How soon should you follow up with someone after an interview if you haven't heard back?"  And to be honest, I've always thought that this was comparable to asking, "What's the right move to make in a chess game?" 

The answer is it depends on what your other player is doing. 

Yes, I know, this sounds like a cop-out, but the fact is there simply is no agreed standard with follow-ups.  To paraphrase that well-known comedy from the 1970s, "The world don't move / To the beat of just one drum / What might be right for you / May not be right for some."  (God speed, Gary!)

The point is, most interview prep books tell you anywhere from a week or two is probably "fair game."  But for the anxious job seeker who's been out of work for some time (cough! cough!), this can seem like an eternity.  In a sense, you're confronted with a classic catch-22:  If you follow up too quickly, you run the risk of alienating and disturbing the one person you don't want to offend during your search; but if you don't at least follow up to show your interest and enthusiasm, you run the risk of losing out to someone else who does.

My solution - and I'm still "pre-employed" as of this writing, so I'd suggest taking this with the proverbial grain of salt here - has always been to follow up within 24 hours of any interview; and then to put a "tickler" on my Outlook calendar for one week.  When that week expires, if I've not heard anything, I do a "weather check" and try to guess the level of interest, enthusiasm, and "genuine positivity" the interviewer demonstrated during our conversations.  (Yeah, it's a gray area.)  If they were excited, I drop a quick follow-up to "re-emphasize my interest" and then add a few extra lines about why I want the job.  If they were a bit more "cool-headed" and reserved, I might wait until the following week to drop much the same line, but that's generally as far as I let things go.  Letting something slide beyond two weeks means - to my mind, at least - running too great a risk that your candidacy gets lost in the shuffle or that the position gets "back-burnered" while more immediate concerns take precedent.  Your job as the job-seeker is to convey positive interest and enthusiasm at all times; and if the worst that can be said by a prospective employer was that you were "too enthusiastic about an opportunity," well, there are (hopefully) countless other places where enthusiasm and interest will be looked upon as benefits rather than hindrances.

Bottom line:  As always, go with your gut, but don't let too much grass grow before mowing that lawn.