Well, I’ve never had to hire someone - I’d say it’s not a dealbreaker but it’s something that does count against the applicant. If other factors about the applican’t competence balance it out, then I’d still be willing to make an offer.
On the salesman thing - Any of the vendors that call on me is late for our meetings, they probably aren’t getting much of my business - or future appointments. My time is too valuable to wait on you selling me something.
On the interview thing - the thing I hated most about managing people was people who couldn’t manage themselves over the simple shit - being on time, getting good directions, dressing appropriately. I wouldn’t want to manage someone who was late to the interview, unless their weren’t many other choices, this choice was significantly more qualified, and the person was sincerely contrite about the tardiness - with a believable excuse.
It would be a dealbreaker for me. I couldn’t trust someone who doesn’t get there on time. One of the rules for interviews is you get there on time barring some unforeseeable, extremely unusual circumstance. Then you call when you know you’re going to be late.
You are far more forgiving than they deserve. The least they could have done was met you and then said you didn’t make the cut. As it was, they apparently expected you to be familiar with the BNSF freight schedules, or whatever the local freight railroad is for you.
And for being three minutes late? You dodged a bullet there. A company that throws you back in the water for being three minutes late to a first interview will do the same if you call in one time too many to deal with a sick kid or other personal matters.
WTF is wrong with people in this country? Why is it that people in power are always above criticism?
In addition to what I said above, how much of a dealbreaker it is in fact seems to be directly related to the competition for the job. I once showed up a half-hour late to an interview, but got hired anyway because they needed people to do the work.
The point about calling to explain is a good one these days now that there are cell phones. In the old days one wouldn’t have wanted to call en route because that would make one even later.
Three minutes seems ridiculous to not give someone achance (post by Gonzomax.)
[quote=“msmith537, post:60, topic:468457”]
And yet, my husband’s partner makes a 7 figure income and is one of the top 5% of producers in the country. He’s been a stock broker for over 25 years. And he’s late everywhere he goes. My husband, Mr. Type A, is prompt and prepared for his meetings but ends up with a fraction of the business that his partner gets. At the end of the day, personality seems to trump promptness in sales.
This is my post exactly.
Thumbs down here.
If I came half an hour late, for all I know I just missed my window of opportunity. You could be interviewing someone else, off to a meeting, out of the building on other business etc.
I don’t know the particulars of the business you’re in, but I sure wouldn’t want her (as your employee) missing the boat with a client like that. Some ppl just don’t understand the importance of deadlines and then there’s the domino effect. IMO it’s a fatal flaw.
In this economy, showing up late for an interview without a really good reason is just_plain_crazy.
No.
a job qualification is the ability to plan one’s day in order to arrive on time. I wouldn’t refuse to hire based solely on that criteria, but I would certainly hire someone else equally qualified who did show up on time. At my facility you have to stop at the gate and check in before driving to our building. More than once we have called the gate early for various reasons to find that an applicant has checked in 30 minutes early. Since they very definitely shouldn’t be wandering around the secure area, we call their cell phones to find them sitting in our parking lot waiting. That is a plus. So a good applicant is one who budgets more than sufficient time to arrive on time. Failure to do so is a negative.
I got lost on the way to a job interview and showed up an hour and a half late. I’m normally very punctual, so I was freaking out big time (I cried so hard that I’m sure my eyes were puffy when I arrived). Either the other candidates were absolutely horrible, or I was just that good because I got the job.
So no, I don’t think it’s necessarily a deal breaker if it’s handled well (I didn’t, which is a testament to how lucky I was). Shit happens to the best of us.
[quote=“PunditLisa, post:67, topic:468457”]
Brokers are a little different than other sales jobs. I work in a Fortune 500 sized company and take calls from guys selling software and hardware. If the guys from Hewlett-Packard waste half an hour of the time I’ve given them, they aren’t getting it back, when the time I have scheduled with them is over, I walk out and into another meeting - possibly with Dell to review the same RFI.
Many, many years ago a big firm asked my school to send Undergrad Thesis people to interview for summer jobs.
The school explained that summer jobs offered through the school had to be offered to people in 4th and 5th year as well. After humming and hewing, the big firm agreed to interview us as well.
I got there by subway. Couldn’t see the place. Walked a long time, so much that Big Avenue (Village) became the street of the same name in the next town over. Walked back. Nobody knew where this place was. Finally got on an overpass and saw it, tucked away behind a supermarket.
I got there half an hour late (I’d gone half an hour early) and explained that I didn’t expect to get an interview, being so late, but I thought they should warn people to get on the overpass if coming from the subway or from the south. The interviewer decided to interview me.
Two jobs. They published both who the jobs had gone to (5th year, both of them) and the reserves. I wasn’t even the right specialty for what they needed and I was a 4th year, but I was first reserve.
Are you sure, sure, sure, that the directions you give are perfectly clear and understandable for someone who’s never been there? Did any other candidates have problems?
PS: would you rather get a call from someone who’s noticed she’ll be late and stopped in an aproppiate spot before calling, or from someone who’s calling mid-traffic? You don’t say which was the case. I hang up on my brother when he calls while driving.
One thing that I do that makes the geographic thing easier is to write the contact information and name of the person I’m scheduled to see on the directions; if I need to call, I’ve got the information right there and don’t need to search for it.
Robin
I once worked in a company where meetings routinely started half-an-hour or more late. And deadlines were for that day, not that minute.
So no, I think it’s a bit of a generalization to say that all jobs require punctuality. And this was the same type of job as PunditLisa’s – in finance.
That said, I’m a very punctual person, to everything, not just job interviews, so that drove me a little batty.
The only time I’ve ever been late for a job interview, I thought I was on time. The recruiter told me to be there at 11:00. I was there, in reception at 10:50 and the receptionist told me they’d been expecting me at 10:30. Turns out the recruiter told each of us a different time.
I got the job, damn if it wasn’t profoundly embarassing for me.
Seems to me that, all other things being equal, “being late for the interview” is a reasonable basis on which to thin the herd. If the other candidates are equally qualified and this one didn’t stand out in some positive way from the rest, the being late and not calling until she was already late is an easy way to narrow your options.
Meetings used to start 30 minutes late at my last job too. Why? Because the people who worked in my group were half-wits with the attention span of a monkey on crack. They had no ability to prioritize or organized. Whenever they recieved a new email or phone call or other instructions they would drop whatever they were doing and start on the new task like mindless robots. If another manager from another group told them to fly halfway across the country, they would forget whatever project they were working on and head to the airport.
Is he actually late to business appointments or just social outings?
When you are a top producer with established relationships or are in charge, you are generally given more slack than a first year broker or analyst trying to make a good impression. My old boss used to be late to meetings all the time. He’s the boss though and can do as he pleases. If I show up late to his meetings, there’s a problem.
He’s late everywhere he goes. The good thing is that he usually meets clients in their own homes so it’s less of an imposition to them than if he met somewhere else. And by late, I mean 10-15 minutes late. But, yes, most of his clients are long established and are aware of his perpetual tardiness.
I wasn’t making a value judgment on whether running meetings late was a good or bad thing. In some companies, I’m sure it’s a very bad thing and in some companies, it might work for them and the companies are very successful.
In any case, I was just pointing out that in companies where they run their meetings late and their deadlines aren’t always on time either, it may not matter much that someone is late for one appointment even if it is an interview because they won’t have to be on time for anything else anyway.
Exactly. Not to put too fine a point on this, but if the position that someone is hiring for requires that just any monkey can do the job, and there are a lot of qualified monkeys out there, then one can be more picky about such things as being on time.
But if the job requires someone with specialized skills or talents and those talents are difficult to find, then disqualifying a candidate for being 1/2 hour late would not be advantageous to the organization.
In the case of the OP, it sounds like there are many people qualified to do this job, so they can disqualify anyone they choose for any reason they choose to do so. If one of the reasons is that someone is 1/2 hour late, then that’s a good a reason as any. But it can also be that they don’t like your dress/suit or your hair or the way you smiled that day.
Promptness is part of the job but if she strikes you as something above the crowd you shouldn’t screw yourself on principle. Second and third interviews are also part of the weeding process.