Hellobee Boards

Agreed. Negotiations for a job begin once you have an offer in hand. If going on a trip makes or breaks whether you get this job, they didn't want you that bad.

It’s very frustrating to me when interviewees aren’t up front about planned committments. We have temporary positions every summer, and this year I asked people to review the schedule to see if they could accommodate it, and almost everyone brought up at least one conflict like a vacation and I really appreciated this as now we can plan around it. I’d say about half the regular staff I’ve hired have brought up committments during the interview process, including things like getting married 5 months down the road. We have had people in the past who did not share planned vacations, and it ended up being a scheduling issue and it was also frustrating because had they been upfront it wouldn’t have caused a problem. We’ve never refused to accommodate someone who had a prior commitment (we’ve had people take unpaid leave if they didn’t qualify for paid leave yet).

For my first real job, I was upfront about needing a few days off for my wedding a few months down the road and they told me I would just have to work X number of extra hours ahead of time.

In short: be upfront. Unless the employer is a robot they’ll probably recognize that people have lives outside work, and that most people have summer vacations scheduled well in advance.

The potential start date has always come up for me in interviews and that’s the opportunity I take to share upcoming vacation plans.

I’ve never heard of a candidate not getting a job over a trip that’s already been booked.

I have always been up front in the interview process about planned trips and it's never steered me wrong. My potential bosses (who turned into actual bosses) appreciated the heads up. In one case, I just had to work extra the week before and after to make up the time (I was hourly). In the other job, it was months in advance but it was a destination race that I had already paid for.

I have mentioned preplanned days off/vacations after I have received a job offer. I always say something like
"With the excitement of this opportunity with you I don't think I've mentioned this trip that is preplanned etc." Then I say something about of course you understand it will not be a paid vacation from them etc and sort of let them respond. It's never been an issue. When I accepted my current position in 2015 with a June 1 start date, I had a Mexico trip planned for July and they were fine with it.

I also say wait until the offer assuming it’s a full time salaried role. This is what I usually heard as a recruiter and we never had a problem with it for the right person.

I’ve done this before and waited until the offer. It ended up not being a big deal at all.