Interview Basics -- BE ON TIME

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Author: Mark Baber

Article source: http://www.jobnewsradio.com/. Used with author's permission.

Okay, everyone knows that you are suppose to be on time to a job interview, right? Wrong, just moments ago I completed a phone call from one of my hiring clients who had an interview set for 2pm. The interviewee arrived at 2:25pm, explaining that the DC metro traffic was busy and delayed their arrival. Sorry, no excuse is good enough. The hiring authority in this case sent a subordinate out to collect the delayed applicant's resume and inform them to contact their recruiter -- me -- for a "possible" reschedule of the job interview. No reschedule will occur. Not only does the employer refuse to reschedule a person who cannot exhibit good time management, but it wastes the time of their recruiter too, and paints the recruiter as a questionable source of good job candidates. And yet, there are some easy tactics that will eliminate this issue.

If you don't know the exact location of your interview, drive there beforehand, so you don't get lost or misunderstand the traffic patterns. The idea is to get there early enough to show you are a responsible employee who doesn't leave things to chance.

In the example we have today -- a real life example, a qualified and interested job applicant has lost the employment opportunity that they hoped they could obtain, all because they didn't look ahead enough to check the typical traffic patterns at the time of day their interview was scheduled. And before you begin to build and glue internal opinions of this example that paints the employer/interviewer as being too stringent, consider how you might react if you were the interviewer, the one responsible for identifying and hiring an individual you can rely upon to show up for work on time, do the job in the timeframe required, to see a project through to completion without excuses -- if you were that person and you set an interview whereby the applicant not only didn't show up on time, they didn't call (despite having a cell phone) to report their possible tardiness, and to top it off -- they only lived 20 minutes away... how would you react?

It takes all sorts of applicants to fulfill the needs of our varied clients. But in all cases, having a candidate arrive to an interview ahead of time, not just on time, tells hiring agents that the person they are about to meet have some basic time management skills, and respect for organization.

GOOD LUCK IN YOUR JOB SEARCH