Travel questionAt the beginning of the month of March I had an opportunity to interview with a great company. The interview was held in Dallas and I live in Houston which is about a 4 hour drive or a 45 min. plane ride. When I was invited to come I asked the Hiring Manager if I could reimbursed for travel expenses for getting there. I wanted to fly so it would save me huge amounts of time on the road. She stated that they do not reimburse for flights because I live in driving distance of the interview. However, she stated that they would reimburse me for mileage driven to and from the interview. (In my mind, I' m like..."What' s the difference?") Well, I made the interview and it went well. During the time I was there I neglected to ask about the travel reimbursement and so did the Hiring Manager. It' s now been almost 3 weeks later and I haven' t heard back from them about the opportunity. I' ve called back to inquire and I haven' t gotten a phone call back. I guess my question is...Should I wait to hear from them about the opportunity before I request my travel reimbursement? Or, should I just go ahead and ask for it now? I figured it would ruin my chances at the job if they thought I was only worried about getting my money back. Whether I get the job or not, at some point in time I would like to have it back and I think it' s a legitimate question. How do you all think I should approach this? If you haven' t heard from them after three weeks and they don' t return your phone calls, chances are the job is gone. Just calculate your mileage costs and send an email requesting reimbursement. If you were not recruited by me or anyone on my staff and you asked for trip expenses, you just ruled yourself out as a candidate. The only people that we offer reimbursement is for people who are recruited by my company. In this case, you have to be an exception. I have recruited several of our competitors sales managers and flew them out to Las Vegas for the interview. We even put them up in our hotel, paid for their food and even took them to see shows on the Strip. To ask to be reimbursed is a bit presumptuous. Here' s what you can do. Any costs related to your job search can be written off your income taxes if your new prospective employer is in the same industry as the one you were currently working in. Never ever ask or demand a company to pay your expenses unless you were being sought after. It would be one thing if you had just shown up out of the blue and asked for an interview, but the company contacted you and asked you to drive 4 hours for the interview. The hiring manager stated to you that they would reimburse you for your mileage (I take it that you will not be reimbursed for meals) so , yes, you should submit your request. Don' t submit it to the interviewer/hiring manager, though. Calculate your mileage and submit the request to the financial department responsible for the reimbursement. Obviously, form what you are saying, the individual who stated this to you is either too busy or does not have enough staff to fob this task on to, so you will need to do a little sleuthing to find the correct person. If you have the company' s telephone number, call and ask the receptionist who in the financial department does the reimbursements. The receptionist may even just switch your call to finance and you can handle it that way. Unfortunately, I have come to the conclusion that it is the norm rather than the exception for company' s to to contact people either with an offer or to let them know that an offer has been extended to someone else. After three weeks and no word, chances are you are not under consideration for the job. So, by all means, now is the time to ask for, and continue to ask for until you get it, your reimbursement. They agreed to give you reimbursement for mileage, so they should be held to it. My husband went thru this a few years back. He was contacted by a company (that saw his resume on monster) and they hounded him till they got him to interview with them. They said they would pay his mileage; they even met with him on a Saturday morning because he couldn't take time off from work. Turns out they did not want to pay what he was looking for, so he was excluded from consideration. Well, he had a helluva time getting his mileage reimbursement out of them, but he finally got it. He called several times, and, I believe, did not get a response. What I think he ended up doing was sending them a letter snail mail, with a statement of his mileage and a request for reimbursement. He finally got it, but it took a while. Pursue it now, before they flat out "forget" they told you they would pay mileage. Like most recruiters you' ve totally missed the point and don' t have a clue! I said that the representative from the company TOLD me that they do reimburse for mileage to and from an interview. I neglected to give them this information at the initial interview. I was only asking if I should ask for it at this point seeing that I haven' t heard back from them otherwise about the position. My theory is, if you' re not going to hire me then give me my money!! If I knew I was going to get hired by this company I would more than likely just let it go as a wash. However, after three weeks of not hearing anything from them it' s pretty safe to say that they' ve either moved on to another candidate or someone or something has slowed their progress. You have a bad attitude from reading your response to me. I was giving my point of view of the situation . . . I wasn' t implying you shouldn' t ask for reimbursement. All I said was that you shouldn' t expect a hiring company to pay your travel expenses unless they recruited you. I am a Director of Sales and if anyone pushed that issue on my company, I wouldn' t hire them because that tells me you are only interested in what the company can offer you instead of what YOU can offer the company. It hurts but it is the truth. The company invited him to interview with them, and told him they would reimburse his mileage. Yes, he asked about it when he was contacted, but what is so wrong about asking? Lots of companies reimburse for expenses when they interview non-local candidates--this is not an unusual situation, as you apparently think it is. If, for example, your resume is posted here on monster and an out-of-state company sees it and calls your for an interview, why wouldn' t you ask about this? (My husband directly applied to, or was contacted by, numerous out-of-state companies when he was looking for a job, and always had either his entire travel expenses paid for, or at least mileage and meals if not always hotel. He had only one company who was not willing to pay anything toward travel expenses, and he opted out of the interview--if they were too cheap to pay mileage, then they likely were too cheap to pay a good wage--which turned out to be true for this particular company.) You don' t know the exact circumstances here. The OP didn' t state what the circumstances were that led to the interview. You seem to be assuming that he pursued them, rather than vice versa. In any event, it doesn' t matter--he was told he would get reimbursed, so they should reimburse him. Period. If they didn' t want to pay any expenses for any candidates who were not local, then they should not have been interviewing them! It takes time and money to attend an interview at a distance--a candidate' s time is just as valuable as the employer' s. It' s fairly evident at this point they do not intend to hire him. He said that if they were interested in hiring him, he would go ahead and forget about asking for reimbursement. What is so "bad" about him asking for what he was told he would get? Or, do you think it' s OK for a company to renege on this? That' s the point here, after all. Again, you' ve totally missed it. Let me see if I can break this down for you. 1. I go to a company' s website and apply for a position. 2. They call me to set up a phone interview. 3. The phone interview goes well. They tell me they' ll call me for an in-person interview. 4. The hiring manager calls me to set up the face-to-face and tells me that the interview is in a city that' s 4 hours away by car. 5. I ask about possibly purchasing a plane ticket and getting reimbursed later so that I can cut down on travel time. 6. The manager tells me that they DO NOT reimburse for plane fare but they do reimburse for miles driven to and from the interview. The manager then tells me to get with her at the interview about the mileage. 7. I get to the interview and there are two interviewers. One is the hiring manager that I spoke to and another gentleman. I interviewed with the other gentleman and didn' t get a chance to talk to the hiring manager again because she was in another interview. 8. I wait to hear from them about the job and haven' t heard anything. 9. Now, my issue is the TIMING of asking for the reimbursement, not whether I should even ask for it at all. I understand what you said originally and your points to individual posters. Many others here understand also. I originally replied that you should send your reimbursement request to the financial department of the company and if you don' t know who that is, which you realistically wouldn' t since you were dealing with the hiring manager, contact the company and ask the receptionist who the person is that you should send your request to. What I forgot to mention is that you might send a note with your request that explains when you travled, why you traveled, who you met with and then point out that in your enjoyment of meeting with the hiring manager and the other gentlemen (include their names) you forgot to ask about the reimbursement. | |
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