Arriving 15 minutes early for an interview????????????

I

IH8FSA

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Does anyone do this anymore?? From what I hear it's appropriate for an HR interview, but for meeting with senior levels, your just inconveniencing them?

What do you guys think? 5 minutes early for senior levels????
 
? C'mon guy. Is this post really that relavant? If your 15 min early for the interview, then you will wait 15 mins.
 
? C'mon guy. Is this post really that relavant? If your 15 min early for the interview, then you will wait 15 mins.
 
Hey Z,

a recruiter once told me that for senior level interviewers, by arriving too early, your placing pressure on the interviewer to hurry up what he/she was doing to accomodate your earlyness. Makes them feel rushed, etc.

Just wanted to know if anyone else heard this, and if 15 minutes early was cliche. I havent interviewed for over 2 years now so wanted to get a heads up for upcoming interviews.
 
15 minutes is too much..5 minutes coming early is the best strategy, since it gives the receptionist time to inform the execs. In addition, coming early can increase your anxiety level.




IH8FSA Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hey Z,
>
> a recruiter once told me that for senior level
> interviewers, by arriving too early, your placing
> pressure on the interviewer to hurry up what
> he/she was doing to accomodate your earlyness.
> Makes them feel rushed, etc.
>
> Just wanted to know if anyone else heard this, and
> if 15 minutes early was cliche. I havent
> interviewed for over 2 years now so wanted to get
> a heads up for upcoming interviews.
 
Putting 12 question marks (or whatever) at the end of that is ridiculous. You show up early for the interview if you want and just seem relaxed. "Hi, I'm Joey. I know I'm a little early, but I'm happy to just sit here and wait". Look relaxed. If there are reading materials in the waiting area, feel free to read it. Don't eat or drink anything, even if someone offers (an accident here would be devastating).

Anyway, it just doesn't make much difference. I don't interview anyone if they are 20 minutes late or more - they failed the first test and capital markets won't wait for them when they are late. Desperate calls on cell phones don't help. However, 15 minutes early is fine and irrelevant to your interview. After the 15 minutes, you are trying to impress someone.
 
I'm a recent grad. I just finished interviewing with at least 5 companies and completed a total of ten interviews over the last two weeks.

I was approx 15 min early to all of them for each interview. I ended up waiting at least 20 minutes to see someone in most cases. Some were more tightly scheduled, some less.

I don't think people really care if they keep you waiting because you were early. The key is to not waste their tme by being late.

Note, being 15 min early has the added advantage of giving you time to fill out an application if need be. This is good for tightly scheduled interviews where you don't want to waste any precious face time writing down the information that is on your resume.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at Saturday, September 1, 2007 at 04:19PM by Gouman.
 
I show up at the scheduled time leaning towards 1 minute early. The way I see it..you set a time for a reason, so it's a waste of my time to sit there doing nothing for 15 minutes. I guess there's different ways to analyze the situation for showing up early versus late. No matter what, you usually have a seat in the waiting room until someone comes out. That's just my personal opinion though. If I arrive early, I will chill out on a bench go over some notes until a couple minutes before, then i enter the building. Either way, I just don't show up early for the sake of being early.
 
For job interviewees I prefer 0-5 minutes early. For hedge fund managers who want a meeting with me I prefer 0-5 minutes late. I once had a HF manager show up 40 minutes early and sat in the conference room unannounced, which was directly across from my office such that we could see each other, for 15 minutes before I figured out he was here to see me.
 
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