The Day of the In-Person Interview

On the interview day you should make sure you have the contact information for the hiring company’s HR representative as well as the name of the person you are going to meet. Keep this information with you in case something goes awry. The following are examples of things that have happened to me or the people I interviewed:

• Candidate forgot to bring the directions to the interview location


• Candidate misread directions and got lost on the way to the interview


• Candidate got stuck in traffic


• Candidate woke up sick that morning


• Candidate had a family emergency


• Candidate decided to take the building stairs instead of the elevator and got locked in the stairway vestibule (this happened to me once!)

If any of these things happen, it’s perfectly legitimate to call your HR contact and ask to have the interview rescheduled. However, if at all possible you should do this BEFORE the scheduled interview time. Otherwise the interviewer(s) may be sitting in the interview room tapping their fingers on the conference room table and wondering where the heck you are.

As a hiring manager I know that the times I had an interview rescheduled or postponed, it didn’t bother me much at all as long as the notice came at least half an hour ahead of the scheduled interview time.
Of course, things can go wrong on the hiring company’s side as well. Here are some real-world examples of our screw-ups:

• The interviewer got stuck in an important meeting and no replacement could be found


• The interviewer was otherwise MIA and could not be found


• The interviewers all declined the interview meeting request at the last minute and no one showed up