After short stints at buy side and sell side firms, I joined one of the largest local commercial banks (reason: monetary benefit). But soon I got tired of monotonous nature of work and have been on job hunt to get back to investment side of business. Thanks to my friends, lately I have been receiving many interviews calls from different (buy side and sell side) firms, unfortunately nothing pans out and due to inexperience/lack of knowledge I couldn’t get past second stage interview. Yesterday I got call for final interview at one of the largest local investment management firm (with CEO & CIO). I prepared for the interview yesterday and today when I was all ready to take off from office for the interview, my boss got call from his boss for some “urgent report” and my boss asked me to work on it. Result: I had to skip the interview. I may or may not be rescheduled as HR guy at that buy side firm told me that he’ll get back to me IF CEO & CIO could take out time in few days (which is unlikely I guess).
Sorry for the rant. I just want to ask, what do you guys do when you have to go for interview during office hours? During past few weeks, I had taken few days off and look like I’ve exhausted my stock of reasonable excuses to take break.
If you can’t schedule over lunch or after say 4:30, you could always say you’ve got to drive someone to the airport. Then if you get to the next round say you’ve got to pick them back up.
If you have an interview that you can’t possibly miss (either because it can’t be rescheduled or you just don’t want to miss it), then I suggest requesting a doctor’s appointment or taking the sick day. Otherwise, stuff at your current employer can come up and derail your plans, and whomever you’re interviewing with should understand that. If you don’t think that they will, perhaps you can ask to arrange for an interview early in the morning (I’ve done in-person interviews as early as 6:00AM), or after normal working hours. You may not feel like you have this leverage but I think it’s important to signal to potential employers that you have your own obligations too, and you take those obligations seriously.
^^This. You can certainly bend the rules and take a sick day or a half day once if necessary, but it’s not reasonable for the potential employer to expect you to be showing up to multiple stages of several hour interviews during normal working hours. One long interview during normal business hours seems like it’s fair to ask for. If they’re asking for more than that, it’s not unreasonable to politely point out that you are both busy with your current job as well as the fact that you are trying to be discrete about your search.
If you have vacation time and your company won’t react poorly, you might just be able to flat-out ask if you could have a day off for the purposes of a three day weekend, and then work with the potential employer to get an interview during this time. You don’t have to make up anything then, and you can sleep in and be nice and rested and relaxed for your interview. If you can do this, it is a nice way to mentally shift gears and ensure that you’re feeling tip-top for a big interview. I don’t know why, but there’s something about sleeping in and having only the job interview to think about makes it easier to show up to an interview and be super on-point.
I have a comparative disadvantage when compared to locals due to Chinese language, so to give myself extra bit of edge over them, I get myself immediately available for a job. Here, employers prefer someone immediately available than wait for the notice period of the selected individual. That’s the job market here in Hong Kong.
I have not that unlucky that I was unemployed for over a month before. Fingercross
I don’t do that, but sometimes I feel being employed gives me less time to search, prepare and most importantly make it to the interview. I have the same problem as the OP. I interviewed at 3 different places in the last month. I never take sick days and now all of a sudden I’m either overdressed at work or taking a random Wednesday off. I hope people at the office aren’t suspicious.
Honestly where I work I think its pretty obvious if people are looking for new jobs but no one really cares, just say your going out after work or some shit. The rule of the game is denial. Deny Deny Deny. Girl’s live by this rule when guys ask where they were last night. lol
Day 2 - Office - “How’d it go?” You, “Bad, my gums/tooth/molar/wisdom tooth/filling/etc is fcked up.”
2nd Round Interview
Day 3 - You, “I have another appointment from said dentist visit to check on …”
3rd Round
Day 4 - You, “Yes, I have to go back again, they fcked up the correction and I’m in some massive pain!”
And so forth. This works with dental appointments, chiropractic appointments, auto repairs, and so forth.
For those who have kids, you leave when ever you damn well feel like it since little Ralphie isn’t feeling well today, teacher conference, needs a ride from school, had detention, bla bla bla.
And what happens if they call your bluff and ask for the dentist receipt? You would look real bad trying to find an excuse on why you don’t have it or are not willing to show it.