Last week, I was 9 minutes late for a 10:30 interview because of an unexpected road closure. I called at 10:10 to give the team a heads-up, and they said it was fine. The interview itself felt like a win, and I followed up with a thank-you note, but I’m still stressed. Is being late an instant "no" in this industry, or does the fact that I communicated early and had a valid excuse count for something?

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It has little or nothing to do with the industry. It depends on the philosophy of the interview team, in addition to how desperate they are to fill the position.

My personal philosophy is that I’ll go through with the interview, but if any other red flags come up during the interview, I’m not giving you the same benefit of the doubt I would’ve given a candidate who prioritized/planned appropriately and showed up on time. It’s sort of like finding an error on a resume. You had weeks or months to prepare and get this right. If you can’t make your resume perfect and show up to the interview on time, it’s hard to understand why I would trust you with any important tasks on the job.

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Typically I'm an hour early for an interview. I live my life always being early. Normal person I expect to be 15-30 mins early when I used to interview. Allowing that much time accounts for things coming up like traffic. The line of work I hired for had emergency services and time restraints. You had to make it to the office within 1 hour of a call and be setting up at location within 4 hours. That was the industry standard so it was important. I may have been different in other industries

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Really depends on area. Where I live now it's not uncommon to have an hour traffic jam. Actually it's the norm minimum one hour between 7-9 am and 4-7 pm. Many times crossing bridges or tunnels delays at least half an hour. It's our only way of travel because I'm on a peninsula. So everyone is expected to factor in those delays and when there isn't one everyone knows that's why you are an hour early.

At our company, as long as you communicate ahead of time, we will work with you, if it is a reasonable reason. We are located in a metropolitan area and traffic, quite often, can be an issue due to accidents and road construction. If no other red flags during the interview, we have always moved applicants forward.

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I think the fact you communicated counts for something. Things happen that are beyond our control. Everyone is just doing the best they can.

I always leave 15-20 min early to account for traffic. It may not matter to them. I worked at a company where employees were late all the time because they left at the last min everyday and the manager stated not accounting for traffic or unforeseen delays makes you late and you’re not trying to be here on time.

It’s great that you communicated it and did the best you could to be transparent. I can’t say it won’t hurt your chances because if they felt like you’re on par with another candidate but they were on time, they might go with them just because they took the effort to be early. But things do happen that are out of your control so I wouldn’t think too much of it.

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