Stop Interviewing Late Candidates

So the creator at Tag Below did a really good job explaining why they would not move forward with an interview for someone who showed up two minutes late. Now, yes, are there times we'll interview someone at the show up late? Of course. If you give us a few minutes advance notice that you're running behind, you know, 10 minutes out, text or call someone, say, hey, I'm stuck in traffic or whatever, totally fine.

We're happy to interview you. However, if you just show up late, unexcused, that the interview, job interview is one of the most critical things you will do in your life that you have to know. If you're an A player, you have to know that we we expect you to be not only on time, but be there a few minutes in advance, five minutes before it starts, be ready in your seat and ready to go if you're in person. And if you're remote, you've got to make sure that you've tested out your technology, you've checked it, checked it once, checked twice, you're ready to go in your seat and prepared for that interview to start on time.

And if you're late, we will not interview you. And that's because this falls into the category of given that this is one of the most important things that you can do in your life, how you do One thing is how you do everything. And so, you know, understanding that as an A player, if I'm an A player, I have a few things that I do very, very well. One, I know that I got to show prepared for the interview.

I have various examples of how I've succeeded, ready to go examples and specifics ready so that I can go deep on how I've succeeded in my current and previous roles. Number two, I'm ready with my supervisor references from previous jobs. Number three, I have, I, you know, my, I've checked in advance to know if I need copies of my resume or if I need to, you know, how I need to dress for the occasion, because some, you know, dress codes are different. Nowadays, you don't have to come dressed up necessarily, but you might have to look a certain way according to what they expect.

You know, number four, this sounds dumb, but it's one of those really good pieces of advice I heard years ago. You know, remember to smell nice, better yet, don't smell at all. And that's, you have to be careful not to, like, overly, you know, put too much cologne or perfume or anything else on. But more importantly, most importantly, be on time.

And again, the example I share is one time I had a COO of a company that I coach want me to do a job interview for someone, a full what we call top grading interview, which tends to be a long form interview. They showed up 12 minutes late and I'd warned the COO in advance they show up late. We really shouldn't interview that person. He persisted because he wanted to see the entire interview process.

We interviewed that person and while kind of forgetting that that had happened, And even some of the other things the interview that were red flags somehow thought that it was a good idea at the time to go, you know what, I still might not want to move forward with this person in this one role, but they might be a good fit in another role. And, you know, fortunately, I knew one of this person's previous supervisors and reached out to that person and found out that she had, in fact, been let go for the role and asked, you know, what had happened and the person's response was reliability issues. So again, how you do one thing is how you do everything. And yes, there can be various circumstances where someone might be late for an interview.

That is one of the few times in life I recommend not to be late because, you know, especially, you know, you're interviewing with my companies. These are organizations that are highly desirable organizations to work for. They hire A players. They pay them extremely well.

And they care about people like crazy. They live their core values consistently. Which, you know, a lot of organizations don't you, but we are a culture of discipline. And one of the things we know is that you have to show up on time for an interview.

So if there's one thing you get right in life, it's I highly recommend be there on time for your interviews.