Unsatisfied with your current job? Maybe its time for a change! Unfortunately new jobs don’t just fall into your lap, you’ll need to grind through the dreaded interview process. Before you face the emotional drain of faking a smile as you enthusiastically profess your love of 60+ hours work weeks, you must overcome another challenge: escaping the office!
Never fear, The Secret Slacker is here to help you covertly escape the office and move on to greener pastures. Here is my proven method to escape the office for any job interview.
1. Schedule the interview at an optimal time
The ideal is to have an interview outside of regular working hours so you don’t even need to do any explaining to your current workplace. It never hurts to ask if a company could do an early morning or evening interview, and you’d be surprised how many places will accommodate you.
If this is not an option, it’s easiest to escape the office if you schedule the interview near the start or end of your regular workday, allowing you to either come into the office late or leave early. Doing so means you minimize your actual time out of the office, as some of your travel time to/from the interview can occur outside of regular work hours.
As you minimize your time out of the office, you may be able to get away with shorter, simpler excuses e.g. “I need to pick my car up from the mechanic tomorrow morning, so I might be a little late into the office”. Most managers will be fine with this, or if you encounter any push back just offer to stay late/come in early to make up for the missed hours.
Obviously interview scheduling may fall outside your control, so if you need to escape in the middle of the day use the tactics in the following steps.
2. Choose the right excuse type: spontaneous or premeditated
There are two types of excuses you can use for your absence: spontaneous or premeditated.
- Spontaneous means you don’t warn your boss in advance. For example you simply show up late and say “sorry, I overslept”, or “I’m feeling ill, I need to leave early”.
- Premeditated excuses are shared beforehand and require an acceptable reason as to why you will be out of the office, for example “I need to pick up a package from the post office tomorrow”.
In most cases, I recommend using premeditated excuses more than spontaneous excuses, as they allow your manager to better plan for your absence and reduce any resentment surrounding your absence.
Spontaneous excuses are mainly useful if something comes up last minute, e.g. “we’re really interested in you and our director would like to meet you, but he’s going on vacation starting next week. Any chance you could make it in this afternoon to meet him?”. Here would be a perfect time to feign illness to excuse yourself from the office early. In either scenario, you need to pick the correct strength of excuse to avoid undue suspicion.
3. Pick the right strength of excuse
If you have to make an important interview in the middle of the day, then you need a strong cover story. I find claiming a dentist or optometrist appointment to be the most effective for a couple reasons:
- Medical appointments require advanced scheduling and can’t be moved easily, allowing you to be firm to your boss about getting a specific time block off
- You should have dental/eye check ups on a regular basis, meaning you don’t have to feign any actual illness to attend
- Dental/eye check ups often require follow up appointments (e.g. cavity fills, contact lens fittings), which you can use for future interview rounds
- Frequent doctor visits indicate a serious medical issue and create more questions and concern, but dental/eye work will be quickly forgotten by your coworkers
Other decent excuses can involve car issues/servicing, as conveniently it also may require follow up appointments. If you have children you can claim an even wider variety of excuses e.g. need to pick them up from school, stay home as they are sick, or even the same dentist/eye exam excuses.
One should avoid any excuses that provoke undue concern from your coworkers, e.g. “I need to see my grandmother in the hospital, she is quite sick”. These may lead to follow up questions weeks later by which time you may have forgotten the lie you told. Also avoid weak excuses that could easily be rescheduled e.g. “The real estate agent is showing me a house I’m interested in buying”, as your boss could easily ask you to reschedule this at the last minute.
I hope this helps you land a better role, good luck in your interviews! For more helpful tips read our comprehensive free e-book on the corporate personality types, browse our other articles, or say hi on our 2500+ follower facebook page.