As professional recruiters, Teresa Freeman and Farah Sharghi have seen it all — job candidates who show up late and in disarray, under- (and over-) dressed, checking their phones during interviews, and overall not prepared to make a good first impression.
Any number of things can go wrong before you arrive for your interview. And it happens to the best of us — but that doesn’t mean you have to let one derailment throw you off your entire game.
Here, Freeman and Sharghi share some common awkward situations that can disrupt a job interview, and how to recover from them with grace.
You’re running late to your interview
The first thing to do is to alert your point of contact, whether that’s the recruiter or the hiring manager, as soon as you know you’re behind schedule, and let them know your new estimated time of arrival.
“The more you can control that narrative, the better,” says Freeman, who has 25 years of experience as an HR executive for companies like Amazon, PwC, and Deloitte and is the author of “Soft Skills I Learned the Hard Way.”
Give yourself a few extra minutes of buffer time if you can to collect yourself outside the building or lobby. You might be full of adrenaline and feeling out of sorts when you arrive, Freeman says, so “give yourself at least a minute or two to take a deep breath before you sit down so that you can be centered.”
Once you arrive, apologize and own up to the fact that being late is an inconvenience. You can say something along the lines of: “I’m really sorry, there were extenuating circumstances that delayed my arrival. But I know your time is valuable, and it’s really important that I convey how interested I am in this opportunity. And I really appreciate the time.”
Be apologetic and genuine, but also succinct, Freeman adds: “Typically you only have 30 minutes to an hour, so you don’t want to spend too much time harping on the fact that you’re late. Own it, move forward and let that person know you really want to be there.”
Your interviewer is running late
Even if you arrive before schedule, calm and collected, you may run into issues if your interviewer is running late. Ideally, you’ll have let the recruiter arranging your interview know about your own schedule constraints, like if you have to be back at your job by a certain time, says Sharghi, who has worked as a recruiter for 7 years and conducted thousands of interviews at companies like Google, Lyft and TikTok.
If you’re alerted that your interview will run behind schedule, it’s appropriate to remind the recruiter about your own time constraints.
“It all boils down to communication and being transparent with the recruiter,” Sharghi says. “Just say ‘Hey, based on my schedule, I have to be back at work at this time. Can we reschedule the interview and make it work to accommodate for what I need?'”
Recruiters understand: “If you have a job and you’re interviewing for jobs, there’s only so many days that you can take off for quote-unquote vacation,” she says. “They want to be respectful of that, too.”
You need to use the bathroom mid-interview
Ideally, you’ll ask the receptionist or your recruiter to use the restroom before you head into the interview room. The next best time to raise the issue is while you’re walking through the office — ask the recruiter if you can pop in to use the restroom before you all sit down, Freeman says.
If you’re interviewing with a few people, try to find a natural break in between people coming in and out of your conference room, she adds.
But if you’ve been in marathon interviews for a while, or you simply realize mid-thought of your need to go, Sharghi recommends timing it when you have control of the conversation: Make the ask as you’re finishing answering a question and before the interviewer can ask another.
Your phone goes off
In 99% of cases, if your phone goes off mid-interview, don’t answer it, Freeman says.
Act quickly and apologize, she adds: “You can say, ‘I’m so sorry. I meant to put that on vibrate before I sat down. I understand your time is valuable. This is important for me as well. Let me turn that off.’ And then just turn it off.”
To that end, she says one of the most underrated moves that scores points with her is if you stow your phone out of sight completely.
You might still have your phone out from when you were navigating directions, or to pull up the name of someone you’re interviewing with. But, “when you go in and you sit down for the interview, it’s a nice move for the interviewer to see you actually put your phone away,” Freeman says. “That’s a visual cue that you as the candidate are completely present and focused.”
The one exception is for true medical emergencies, Freeman adds. If that’s the case, make that clear as you’re sitting down. You can say something along the lines of, “I’m completely focused and present on this conversation. I’m interested to hear more about this opportunity. But my phone is close by because my dad is in the hospital” or “because my sister’s about to have a baby.”
“It would have to be a pretty significant reason,” Freeman says.
The interviewer is giving you zero energy
Sometimes you may feel you’re giving your most high-energy, best first impression, but you’re getting little positive feedback from your interviewer, Freeman says.
That once happened to one of her coaching clients — a third-year college student. “He was prepped and ready to go, and then what he got back from that interviewer was really hard to read and he didn’t feel connected.”
In that scenario, Freeman says, understand that you never know what the interviewer is assessing, and that their flat response may or may not be intentional to see how you handle it. Don’t assume you’re bombing your interview.
At the end of the day, she says, “Be sure that you maintain your own energy level, you’re still positive and you’re thoughtful in your answers.”
You call someone, or the company, the wrong name
“There’s a lot of opportunity in an interview for your words to get jumbled or for you to say something that you didn’t intend,” Freeman says, especially if you’re interviewing with multiple companies at once, let alone with several people within an organization.
“As soon as you recognize it, just own it,” Freeman says. “I don’t even know if you want to explain [the mix-up] quite frankly, just recognize that you’ve made the mistake and then move on. Don’t linger on it. Don’t worry about it.”
For example, if you’re interviewing with someone named Dave and accidentally call him Steve, “that’s enough of a moment to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I know your name is Dave, I’m so sorry about that.'”
“But if it was just a turn of phrase, or you a messed up a cliche, I would just keep going,” she says.
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