Interview expenses

When traveling a reasonable amount of distance (at least four or five hours) should you be reimbursed for traveling expenses? Or better yet should they fly you in? Should the company put you up in a hotel? I've only had to stay over a night when traveling for an interview once and the paper put me up in a pretty nice hotel, but didn't pay for gas. I thought that was an even trade. Thoughts?

 

If someone drives to us from out of town, we pay mileage. If it's a long, long way out, we fly them in. And we pay for the hotel, too.

 

Seems fair. If the place wants you to pony up to come in for the interview, I'm not sure you want to work there.

 

I understand that in other businesses, though, there is very little money for expenses related to interviewing. You're either local or on your own dime.

 

The paper should pay all your expenses. If not, then you might want to think twice about working there. You need to make a good impression, but so do they.

 

Depends. My dad's an engineer, and he's never paid for his hotel or other expenses to get to an interview. My sister's an attorney, and again, has never paid a dime. Same thing with my brother, who does medical research.

My mom, who teaches, has never had interview expenses paid. Course she's also always been in the town of the school district she's interviewed at.

 

This isn't like other businesses, though. People in other industries usually don't have to move to other cities for their next job.

 

I'll tell this story because the newspaper is defunct. In 1983 or 1984 I was talking to the Houston Post about what would have been my first job on a major metro. SE seemed nice, sent me papers to critique. Then I found out that not only wouldn't they pay relocation, they didn't pay interview expenses. I think their circ was a bit more than 300K. Now I was making $375 per week on a mid-major at the time and I figured that airfare, hotel, cabs and meals would have run me more than two weeks' net pay. That's a pretty big gamble considering I had no racing page by which to handicap my chances against the field and did not even know if the track was going to be turf or dirt (how the SE was going to size us up). So I said no thanks, with regrets.

 

I would have liked your chances on Lasix, but you would have been put out to pasture pretty soon anyway.

 

If they don't offer to pay expenses it's probably a pretty poorly run operation...or one with no cash. Not sure you want to be involved with either.

 

So the general consensus is if they're not paying for anything you should really think hard if it's a good place to work or not?

 

Depends on the job, too. If you are applying to be a preps writer, they might be looking harder local than they would a pro beat writer.