Instant Interviews: 101 Ways to Get the Best Job of Your Life

Chapter 38. Taking Off in Business Class

Airplanes provide an unusually good opportunity for instant interviews with quality offerors.

You have a captive audience. You just need to captivate, then incubate. Capture, then release.

Why does every unpretzeled carrier have a fancy business traveler magazine stuffed in that pouch in front of your seat? Undoubtedly more business is conducted in front of airplane seat pouches than anywhere else.

So let's analyze, maximize, and intervise.

Fly with the Flock

The rush hours are weekdays from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Any earlier and you get world vacationers. Later, you're trying to interview in the dark. Other times are like weekends and holidays. You couldn't get an interview as a babysitter.

Call a Travel Agent

I use someone in Cleveland. It's as though she's right in my office in Los Angeles. One call to her is like a dozen calls to carriers, if I can even find out who flies where.

A dozen calls to carriers can waste several hours (time is money) and have me speaking with call-center agents who neither speak English very well nor hear very well.

Book Early

Thirty days before any flight usually will get you a refundable ticket and better seat selection. You want any aisle seat so you can move around. Early booking also allows you flexibility to change flights as the departure dates arrives.

I recently tried to change a flight from Shreveport to stop in St. Louis when my best friend became ill.

Booking on the very same nonstop flight had ...