This is not going to come as a great shock to most people, but a new survey by Workopolis has found that it is not OK to text during the job interview.

The thing is, if a recent report is to be believed, this will actually come as a shock to a full third of Millennials.

In the report from Ultimate Software and the Center for Generational Kinetics, titled “Is there really a generational divide at work?” researchers supposedly found that 33%, or one third, of Millennials think it is acceptable to text during a job interview.

Read my article on the report here.

We found this so odd that we started to wonder if perhaps we were out of touch around here, and decided to take our own poll of hiring managers. We found, much to our relief, that it is not us who are out of touch.

Their report also found that 30% of Millennials -defined in the report as people born between 1977 and 1995 – also think it’s acceptable to arrive at a job interview late by five minutes or more. And that 25% of Millennials think that working somewhere for seven months demonstrates employee loyalty.

So, we asked about these things. Here’s what we found.

We asked, “Is it OK for a candidate to text during the job interview?”

Out of 513 respondents, 511 said no and 2 said yes, meaning 99.6% of people say it is not OK to text during the interview and we assume the other 2 people were joking.

We also asked, “How late is it acceptable for a candidate to arrive at the job interview?”

    Answers:
    Not all late 95%
    5 minutes 4%
    Other 1%

Again, most of you won’t be surprised by this but we thought it our duty to share this information, in case you are one of the 30% of Millennials who thinks it’s OK to show up late, or if you happen to know one of them.

Finally, we asked, “How long would an employee have to stay in a role before you would view that employee as loyal?”

    Answers:
    6 months 3%
    1 year 13%
    2 years 30%
    3 years 29%
    5 years or more 26%
    (total = 101 due to rounding)

So, no. Seven months does not a loyal employee make, in case you weren’t sure.

Millennials are the fastest growing demographic in the Canadian workforce and are expected to make up 75% of it by 2028. Because of this, it is imperative that you please do your part in sharing what we have learned here today:

In short: it is still not OK to text during the job interview or to arrive late. Less important but still notable, you will not build trust in seven months.

Given the opportunity to comment, here are some of the things respondents said:

“Texting while talking to anyone in any context is rude.”

“Sometimes stuff happens – accident, breakdown etc. I will forgive someone who lets me know they are going to be late for a valid reason. Not because they missed their stop while texting!”

“If anyone arrives even one minute late for an interview, I do not meet with them. EVERYONE’s time is valuable, and if they don’t respect people enough to arrive five min early, they are not compatible enough with our environment to work here.”

“If a potential employee was unavoidably held up and was going to be late for an interview, as long as they called before the appointed time to let me know, I would be okay with that.”

“If I was interviewing someone and they were texting I would ask them to leave and that would be it!! No chance at a job.”

“As a millennial, I am stunned by the survey results. It is never okay to text, email or take a call during an interview. There is nothing ruder than using your phone in any capacity during an interview. An interview usually lasts 30 minutes, is the text message really that important that it can’t wait until you’re done?!”

“I would immediately terminate an interview and ask them to leave if an interviewee were to text during the interview.”

“Arriving late is not great – You should always leave early to account for the unexpected. That being said, sometimes it can’t be helped. So as long as the person calls I would give them the benefit of the doubt and try to accommodate them when they arrive. If however, a candidate was texting in the interview, I would cut it short and invite the candidate to leave.”

“Texting and arriving late are simply not acceptable. Indicative of future problems.”

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