Your Personal Timekeepers

Dad Joke: Why do time zones never get invited to parties?

Answer: Because they always “zone out” and arrive at the wrong time!

Well, unless you come up with an effective strategy for handling all your interviews with international schools located in different time zones, you too will arrive at the wrong time. Once the schools you applied to start wanting to schedule interviews with you, it will become increasingly difficult to keep those interviews organized within your regular daily schedule, but here are a few helpful tools that are guaranteed to make you more successful.

The first is a website known as the World Time Buddy that also has widgets and apps for you to utilize. I have been using this website for years and absolutely love the slider tool that helps you look at several times zones at a time to discover the best interview time for everyone involved. This is particularly handy when, for example I was interviewing with someone attending a job fair in Thailand while I was living in California, USA, but the rest of the interview panel was in their home country in Hong Kong. I have downloaded this app for my iPhone and have embedded it as a widget on my websites and blogs before, but I still prefer the original version on the website as there seems to be more functionality that way.

The second is Google Calendar. Did you know that you can easily customize your Google Calendar by doing a few easy steps? If you go into your Google Calendar App at calendar.google.com, click on the Settings Menu "Cog" at the top right corner, and then click on Settings from the drop down, you will now be able to add a second Time Zone to your Google Calendar, label it with the name of the country or school, and now see the times displayed running along the left side of your weekly calendar view. This makes choosing interview times easier to match. This little feature helped me avoid making the mistake of agreeing to meet with an interviewer at 3am my time, but 1pm her time. Instead, I was able to choose more reasonable times (such as 8am for her and 10pm for me) that wouldn't require me to wake up in the middle of the night to interview.

That's not all Google Calendar can do. On that same settings page, there is a section called World Clock that enables you to several different World Clocks to the left side view of your Google Calendar in weekly view. If you, like me, have several interviews scheduled that week from various time zones, this function keeps you from getting them confused. 

Lastly, the "Clock" app on the iPhone has a few helpful tools embedded within in to assist you. As soon as you know where the school is that you have an interview with, I would go to your "Clock" app and click the "World Clock" icon at the bottom. From there, all you have to do is click the + sign at the top right corner to add a new location to your app. The benefit of doing this means that now you will know exactly what time it is in the country you are thinking of moving to compared to your current time, which knowledge will also help you plan interview times and to double check that you aren't running late for an interview if the interviewers only mention their times and not yours in correspondences and Google Invites.

The second feature inside of your iPhone is the good old "Alarm." This may seem like a simple tip, but never underestimate the power of setting up alarms to remind you to get to your interview location regardless of whether or not it is in-person or via an online connection using Zoom, Meet, or Teams. Double check that you have indicated which days for the alarm to go off. You wouldn't want your alarm to wake you up on Friday at 4am for an interview you were meant to have on Monday at 4am, but that you missed because the time was set wrong; this may have happened to a friend of a friend of mine, or me...so just be sure the days are marked correctly and you actually set the alarm by moving the switch to the right.

Such simple, yet effective tools. Mind blown, right? Wishing you all the best getting to your interviews on time, no matter where they or you are located!