Career Cube Blog

Many times people delay looking for a job because they’ve got a week-long vacation planned or they have to have some minor surgery that will require them to miss a week or two. They think that employers will be so turned off by this, that they’re better off waiting to even start their search. Lemme give you an inside tip….

Employers are people too!

Yes, it’s true, they really are.

Let’s say you start applying for jobs, but your vacation is within the next month. Put your cell phone on your resume and make sure you bring it with you on vacation. If you will not have access to your email on vacation, you can include a sentence in your cover letter that indicates the dates that you’ll be out of town, and that it would be better to contact you by cell phone. You don’t need to say that you’re going on vacation (it’s none of their business), but providing them information about your whereabouts helps them plan. What you don’t want to have happen is for them to send you an email request for an interview, and they take your silence to mean that you’re not interested in the position.

If you are offered a position with the company-but have a vacation or minor surgery coming up-it’s perfectly fine to let them know that when you’re negotiating the offer. Tell them that you’ve had a trip or surgery or whatever, scheduled between these dates. You are telling them upfront and you hope it won’t pose a serious inconvenience. As long as your plans don’t go longer than a week-most employers (of course I can’t speak for all), should be fine with it. You’ve told them upfront and you’ll do everything possible to not inconvenience them.

What you do not want to do is this tale I recently heard from a hiring manager. It’s not exactly the same point I’m making above, but it’s still good to serve as a warning to others. This hiring manager made an offer to a candidate and she accepted. The hiring manager told her that he would be out of the office for a few days around what would be her start date, and that it would probably be better if she started work the following week. The candidate insisted on starting earlier and working with the hiring manager’s associate get up to speed. The hiring manager agreed. While he was out, the candidate called the associate and said that she had to have an emergency root canal. Knowing that was not the kind of thing you bounce right back from, the company gave the candidate another day before they started. The candidate called in the following day to say that they had to go back to the dentist. So now 3 days have passed since they had said they would start. The associate told her that instead of trying to come in that afternoon-she could start the following week-which was the plan in the first place. Monday morning, the candidate doesn’t show. The hiring manager calls, and the candidate says that she’s out of town and thought that they intended her to start the FOLLOWING week. Yikes! Dude-you have GOT to use your head!

What I’m curious about is why the candidate thought that they’d gotten a reprieve from starting for an entire week. All of the conversations had been centered around starting as soon as possible, and now it’s suddenly delayed an entire week-and the candidate is fine with it? They were the ones chompin’ at the bit. The hiring manager decided to not hire the candidate.

The moral of that story is, be honest. If you want to take some time off before you start a new job, that’s perfectly understandable. Everyone needs a chance to decompress. But then confirm an actual start date for the position. If you wake up that morning and you’re not positive if you’re expected to be there or not–it’s better to show up and be overeager-than it is to NOT show and lose the job. Hands down, every time.

Could this position have been saved? Hard to tell-on Monday morning the candidate said they were out of town so they couldn’t physically have been there, but a proactive call as soon as the candidate possibly suspected that there was a misunderstanding in the dates would have helped. If I was that candidate and was now out of a job because I’d already quit my old job, I’d show up bright and early on Tuesday morning and probably sit there until someone talked to me. At that point pride be damned-I need a paycheck. But that could be just me.

Popularity: 10% [?]