don't promise

Don’t promise anything in an interview that you won’t be willing to deliver once you're on the payroll.

Early in my career, I was asked in an interview if I would be willing to relocate. I was eager to be hired, so I immediately blurted out that I would be willing to relocate anywhere the job required. I didn’t even bother to ask where they might want me to move. Besides, the interviewer had only asked the question hypothetically. The position that I was interviewing for was based in my hometown of Cincinnati. What were the odds of them actually asking me to move somewhere else?

Six months after I was hired, I was called into my boss’s office and told about an “opportunity.” There was an opening for a more senior position in the company’s Buffalo office, and management thought that I would be a great fit. Of course, it would entail a move to Buffalo, but I had expressed a willingness to relocate during the interview, so the company had no reason to believe that I would have any objection.

Now, I don’t mean to knock Buffalo—but there is more than enough snow for me in Southern Ohio. Needless to say, I was less than enthusiastic about the move. I had painful images of myself trudging to work in snowshoes from November through April. As it turned out, I was able to secure a different, equivalent position in the company’s Cincinnati office. However, I have never forgotten the lesson learned from that experience; and it is one that you would be wise to take to heart as well. Don’t assume that a company is bluffing if they ask you about your willingness to relocate.

Perhaps you are one of those rare souls who would be happy living anyplace on earth for your job. However, most people have some fairly strong preferences regarding the place where they live. There are many factors to consider: moving away from family and friends, getting used to a new climate, etc. If you are asked about relocation in an interview, it’s all right to ask for more information, such as where you might be asked to move, when the move might occur, and the duration of the assignment. If moving to an undesirable location is a part of your “dream job,” then it might not be such a dream job in the final analysis.

I know another person—I’ll call her Andrea—who encountered a similar problem with the overtime issue. Andrea was asked in an interview if she would have any objection to working late during the week and possibly even on Saturdays. At the time, she was pursuing her MBA as a part-time student, and it simply wasn’t practical for her for her to work that many hours. Nonetheless, she told her interviewers that she would make herself available “whenever the company needed her.”

As you can imagine, conflicts quickly arose when Andrea tried to head out the door at 5:00 sharp two nights per week to attend her evening classes. Her employer also found that she was less than enthusiastic about sacrificing her Saturday study and class project time to attend weekly summary meetings and catch up on leftover tasks from the workweek.

Both Andrea and her employer would have been better off if she had clarified her time limitations during the interview. If the company had known about the demands imposed by her part-time student status, there might have been room for a compromise plan regarding working hours. In the worst case, the company might have decided that it really wasn’t interested in hiring someone who couldn’t be available 24/7. However, it would have been preferable for both parties to have made this realization before Andrea was hired.

Andrea ended up leaving her job for lower paying position that offered a straight forty hour workweek with flextime. In this position, she did not have to engage in a minor skirmish every time she walked out at 5:00 p.m., and her new employer was able to adjust her schedule and workload without hampering their operations.

Counterpoint

None of the above is meant to imply that you shouldn’t be prepared to make personal sacrifices for your job, including extra work hours and relocation. (Nor is it advisable to arrive at the interview with a laundry list of things that you would find “unacceptable.”) However, companies with special needs for employees who are open to relocation or extraordinary work hours will often ask you to state the limits of what you are willing to do. In these cases, it is in everyone’s best interest for you to make your bottom line known before excessive time and money are committed.