The best time to schedule an interview

At some point of time in your life you will find yourself in an interview. If you are a highly sought after individual, you may find yourself in several interviews in a very short time frame.

Whatever the case may be there are certain rules when you schedule an interview that should be followed for the best results.

You should always schedule you interviews between Tuesday and Thursday. If you schedule an interview on Friday you are getting someone at the end of the work week when all that is on their mind is the upcoming weekend. If you schedule an interview on Monday, you are getting the beginning of the work week and an individual who is not happy that their weekend just flew by so fast. In either case you will not get the full attention you want from your prospective employer.

As far as time goes, you should always schedule you interviews for two different time spans. The first time span is between 10am and 11am. Assuming the business you are interviewing at is 9am to 5 pm, arriving any earlier than 10am will likely get you an interviewer that has not had their morning coffee kick in and may be just a bit cranky. Always give your prospective boss a little time to settle into the work day. If you schedule your interview after 11am you risk a hungry interviewer that will rush you out the door as the noon lunch hour loom. You want to make sure that you have at least a half-hour to plead your case as to why you should be working there.

The second time span is between 2pm and 4pm. Again, assuming the company is a 9am to 5pm company you can bet lunch is from noon to 1pm. Get there any earlier than 2pm and you risk interviewing for a full-bellied boss that isn’t settled back into the work day. Give your prospective employer just a bit of time to get back into the work groove after lunch is over. You will also not want to interview past 4pm as the work day ends at 5pm. Nothing will get you through an interview faster than scheduling it at the end of the work day. No one likes to stay at work late if they don’t have to and an interview scheduled later than 4pm puts you at risk of being hurried through the interview. Again you want to make sure you have at least a half hour of undivided attention to get the most out of your interview.

The only other rule for interviewing is if the company you are interviewing for gives you a time and day, then that is the perfect time for your interview. Never, under any circumstances, change an interview that has been set for you by a prospective employer. If they want to meet with you at 4:49 pm on Friday, then that’s when you go. But since many companies will leave it up to you as to when you want to interview for the position you are interested in, using these couple of scheduling tricks can end up being to your advantage.