interview travel advice needed

May 7, 2012 5:47 PM

Interview travel etiquette advice needed

(typing on my phone so appologies for formatting in advance)

I am currently located in the midwest and have begun some preliminary interviews for positions in nyc (i am relocating there but am not from there). Luckily lots of companies seemed intrested and I have advanced past phone screens to in person interviews. Some companies are offering to fly me out on overlapping dates. While I wwould love to consolidate trips and minimize taking random entire days off at my current job (the dont know im searching), it seems like a difficult subject to broach with the employers. if I have 2 companies asking for the same date, should i ask them each to buy a one way ticket? it seems shady to have one company pay for the trip while I have plans to speak with someone else while there. Any advice managing this would be greatly appreciated. I want to be gracious, thankful and professional while consolidating trips, if possible.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (4 answers total)

Why is a hard to broach this topic? First of all, it is not at all a bad thing to indicate that you have other interviews. Minimizing travel time and cost is a win-win for everyone. It only gets complicated if the company is the type of multi-national corporation that does all the booking, prepaid, for you. In that case, I would just let that company pay for it. Otherwise, just buy the ticket and split the reimbursement requests, if you're being good and honest about it. I would get an informal pre-approval from the HR first though. You are certainly not going to be the first candidate with these requests.
posted by bread-eater at 6:07 PM on May 7, 2012 [5 favorites]

Your motivations here (being an attractive candidate with options; minimizing time off work and not overcharging any of the interviewing companies) are 100% legit and reflect well on you. Explain the situation to whoever you're talking to about travel logistics.
posted by fingersandtoes at 6:42 PM on May 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

In my field it is common to tell them that you are interviewing with multiple places and to see if they want to split expenses. I don't see a downside.
posted by J. Wilson at 7:19 PM on May 7, 2012

When I interviewed coming out of college, I would submit for reimbursement a pro rata share of expenses to the firms with whom I interviewed. No double billing and no charging one for all.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:26 PM on May 7, 2012