how much notice should you expect to get when you’re invited to interview?

A reader writes:

I’ve been in the job market over the last few months for executive roles and have been genuinely surprised by how disorganized and last-minute some hiring processes are. Is it standard and reasonable to expect candidates to be available within 24-48 hours for half- or full-day interviews, locally or even with travel? If candidates can’t drop everything within a day, is it reasonable for them to ask for alternative times, or was that their shot and it’s over?

Another way to look at this: if you could give advice to talent teams on managing executive recruitment processes in terms of scheduling, advanced notice, or travel for candidates (e.g., how far in advance to schedule interviews; how much time one should expect candidates to dedicate for a given session early or late in the process; what are best practices for candidates traveling to interviews), what might it be?

I recognize that roles like the one I’m applying to have strong candidates and a wealth of interest, so I’m not entirely surprised that they can take this approach and still get what they want in terms of hires. But, for example in one instance, I was a little surprised my response of “I am so sorry, I have a medical appointment that cannot be postponed tomorrow morning so I can’t travel for a 9:30 am interview; are there alternatives for the panel meetings?” was met with, “We’ve decided to move on to more qualified candidates.” But maybe dropping everything is just the norm now and I need to reset!

Nah, it’s not reasonable.

It’s okay for an employer to ask, although if they’re proposing something very last-minute, they should acknowledge that and explain why. It’s fine to say, “We just had a slot open up tomorrow; any chance you could make it then?” or “I’m so sorry for how last-minute this is, but the hiring manager was unexpectedly called out of town and we’re hoping to fit in interviews before she leaves.”

And there might be cases where they do need to be inflexible about it. If they have legitimate time constraints and other strong candidates who can meet their timeline needs and they feel confident that they can hire a good person from that pool, it’s not unreasonable for them to figure that if you can’t make it, they’ll pass you up this time. It’s frustrating on your end, for sure, but it doesn’t mean they did anything wrong. (Although they should acknowledge that! When you couldn’t make a 9:30 a.m. interview the next day, the employer’s response of “We’ve decided to move on to more qualified candidates” was snotty! If they couldn’t offer another slot, they should have said something like, “I’m so sorry but it’s the only slot we have available because of some constraints on our side. I realize it was a very last-minute request, and I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work this time.”)

But certainly if we’re talking about best practices, employers should assume that the candidates they’re most interested in are likely to have lives and existing commitments, and they’ll need to provide a reasonable amount of notice for interviews and be prepared for some back and forth on days and times. If the sole criteria for who to interview is who’s available tomorrow, by definition they’re restricting their candidate pool in ways that aren’t likely to produce the best hire.

And it’s particularly weird that you’re encountering this for executive-level roles, where candidates are especially likely to have packed work calendars.

Exactly what a reasonable amount of notice is varies. Typically at least a few days is the minimum that’s reasonable to expect, and even that is pretty short; a week or more is better. Also, the more time you’re asking someone to set aside, the more notice they’re likely to need. It’s more reasonable to ask someone to fit in a half-hour phone call in the next few days than it is to assume they can manage a full-day, on-site interview in that same period.

And when someone will need to travel from out-of-town, typically they’ll need more time. That said, it’s also true that if the employer has plenty of strong local candidates to pick from, they’re not necessarily going to be incentivized to drag things out to wait for someone who has to travel, unless that person is head-and-shoulders above everyone else. Which is one reason why, when you’re looking for a job long-distance, it helps to be prepared to get yourself there quickly if asked.

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