Cell phones have been around now for well over a decade, so
this blunder should go without saying. But believe it or not, it still is a
problem from time to time during an interview. This is the easiest interview
blunder to rectify; turn off your phone…..completely. Setting it to vibrate
does not solve it; it can still be heard. Turn off your phone well before you
enter the interview, and there will be no problem.
The message a cell phone ringing in an interview send to the
interviewer is that you think your personal life is more important than the
interview, that you don’t care about the interviewer’s time, and that you don’t
take the interview seriously. This has never happened to me personally, but I
did hear through a colleague in the industry a story of an interviewee who’s
cell phone rang during the interview, and the candidate actually had the
audacity to ask the interviewer if she could leave the room to take the call!
I’m still blown away by this account.
If you do forget to turn off your cell phone, and it does
ring during an interview, silence it immediately! Apologize to the interviewer,
let him/her know you thought you had turned it off, and then take this
opportunity to let him/her know you are now turning it off. If you don’t shut
it down completely, you risk another call, text message or voicemail
notification. A first strike may be forgivable; a second will not. Don’t blow
an interview for a silly reason like this.
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