Asked to return to intern again but HR and boss are not responding to emails

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

Last summer I had an internship at a local tech company doing software development. I felt like I did a pretty good job and was consistently told by my href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/boss">boss and team that they enjoyed my being there and were very happy with the work I was doing. My href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/boss">boss's href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/supervisor">supervisor even went so far as to give me a fairly sizable bonus near the end of the internship as a href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/thank">thank you. At the end of the internship I was told by my href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/boss">boss and his href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/supervisor">supervisor that I was more than welcome to return to intern again next summer and to let them know as the summertime got closer.

This year I looked at some other companies internship programs but nothing ended up really fitting so I decided to take my href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/boss">boss up on his offer and return to intern again. At first I emailed my HR rep, explained the offer that was given to me and asked how to proceed/when things needed to be done by. The email was read about a day after I sent it (I have a mail tracking program) but I never received a response. I waited about two weeks and finally decided to email my former href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/boss">boss about it directly. The email was read 20 minutes after I sent it but once again I received no response.

It's been 4 days since my last email and I'm confused as to how to move forward with this. Do I email my former href="https://forum.tuteehub.com/tag/boss">boss and/or HR rep again politely reminding them of my previous email and asking for a response, or do I wait? It's getting pretty close to the time where I received my offer as a first time hire and I'd rather not lose my spot because they have already hired new interns.

manpreet 2 years ago

Any time you're seeking a job, you should have a stack-ranked list of your opportunities, and you should be pursuing the top three in parallel. Your top goal is to have an internship that you'll learn from this summer, so don't let one opportunity hang you up in reaching that goal. If you let them make you wait, you may miss getting any opportunity. This advice applies to any job-hunting moment in your career, not just in internships.

I'd recommend that you set a date on which you're going to choose where to intern, then share that with both the HR person and your former boss in the same email. If you're pursuing multiple positions, you have the opportunity to give them a genuine deadline, and perhaps to give them motivation via the competition. Your next note might best be something like, "I'm finalizing my choice for this summer's internship at the end of the month. I really enjoyed working with you last year; if you enjoyed it as well, I would appreciate the opportunity to talk about doing it again this year." If you send a deadline, you've got to stick to it and be okay if they miss; otherwise, your deadline was really an attempt to manipulate them for your convenience, and it will hurt your credibility when they realize that.

If you take one thing away from this experience, consider that you can always respond to an email with a brief note to manage expectations for a real reply. What's driving you crazy right now is that you don't know what's going on which makes it hard for you to make choices. You've given yourself an expectation that they're still going to be excited about having you back, and they're defying your expectation by not replying. This doesn't mean they're not interested — they could be scrambling to find you a spot before replying, or in the middle of a critical situation that's got all of their attention right now.

These are not good reasons for them to be silent; they should drop you a short note to align expectations. Something like, "Hi! We're buried under something else at the moment but really want to talk to you. Can we catch up in a few weeks?" or, "Hi. Unfortunately, we've filled the program for this year. We're really sorry." (with or without an invitation to ask again next year). This is a hard skill that's underappreciated but hugely valued when working in teams. I wish I could say I'm really good at it — I'm not! — but I strongly value it when others are.

By the way, I don't necessarily agree with the "pick up a phone" recommendations. It's often a bit weird to get a call following up on an email, and if there's a reason they're not responding, you've just made it awkward. However, if you've kept in contact throughout the year and the call wouldn't be odd, go for it.