Ring them, apologise profusely send it again.
They probably won't murder your children.

You didn't leave anywhere near enough contingency time, based on my experience of living and working around that area. You could easily have lost an hour trying to get around the M25 and down the M4. Out of interest, why did you go across to the M40 from Northampton? I'd have thought the M1 was shorter, although the roadworks are a bit of a pain.

General rule with the M25 at rush hour is to allow at least an hour more than you need, once inside the M25 you can double that on some occasions. The route your sat nat chose wasn't too bad, although I'd have taken the M25 out of preference.

You were lucky to be only 15 minutes late. If I were you (and again, this is based on bitter experience), next time I'd be allowing 90 minutes extra. If you're early at least you get time to relax before the interview.

I make a point of not leaving too much contingency time for an interview on the basis that if I can't do the commute to them in a sensible time then I don't want the contract anyway.

Er, barring any monumental fk ups, I'd say you've got the job then.... :-)

The interview I had for my current contract, was during a period of heavy snow, so I came down on the Sunday morning, stayed in a B&B, and still managed to arrive at the interview 1/2 an hour early on the Monday.

Do other PHers downshift their cars when attending interviews?

People always notice the type of car you arrive in. I also work in an industry where car allowances are not generous (that's why I now work freelance). I remember many years ago arriving at an interview in a convertible. The interviewer spent a large part of the time refering to my car (negatively). Didn't get the job.

I did learn from the experience and started attending interviews in my Wife's Golf. I would consider hiring a grey Mondeo or Focus to attend an interview nowadays. It's a sad indictment of my industry sector that works car parks are full of grey / black repmobiles and to drive anything else is considered negatively.

pp

Thanks, yes, the other meaning of "downshift" did occur to me when I posted that.

I agree, there is nothing more satisfying than giving it some revs in the works car park. Not sure all those that run diesel repmobiles always appreciate it.

pp

Yes, I had a similar one. It was a converted garage with an extension on the back, although in fairness it was extremely nicely and professionally done.

A little off topic as it was more than just an interview, but I negotiated the contract, agreed to start and that I would work predominantly from home but attend their office for a little while to get into things. Only it turned out they expected a fair few trips up to London to 'road warrior' meetup in coffee shops and the like and those began on day 3.
Then on day 4 they asked me to to design and implement a mission-critical database solution for online gaming tournaments not dissimilar to the XBox Live lobby, which was so far outside my remit it was untrue (I'm a C++ developer). I made it perfectly clear this was not my thing, but they asked me to go for it anyway. The middle of the following week they terminated the contract as it "wasn't working out". Later on I found them bad mouthing me on a public forum over it and I posted that they'd been lucky I hadn't sued them for breach of contract and would be luckier still if I didn't sue them for libel in the light of the comments. Forum became private immediately.

A lot of the developers I have interviewed seem to be like this.

I had a very similar one to this.

Just left the Army, only job I had before that was in a warehouse so I wasn't too clued up on the bullst advert speak you see in some job adverts.
Just needed a job to tide me over while my application for my current job was going through the motions so I applied online to a sales outfit in Glasgow "no experience needed etc etc". Got an immediate response offering an "interview" (obviously).

Turned up to the place in the city centre, small open plan office with some glass walled interview rooms with folk already in them going for the job, and there were shedloads of people already waiting in the sitting area.
Got called in for my interview by a 21 y/o "executive" who proceeded to spend the next 15 minutes telling me how great he is, how far he's come and how he drives a BMW, you know, those rare and exclusive cars. Anyway, the next part of the process was to go out in the "field" with a seller and get shown the ropes (still not sure at this point as to what the job actually entails).

So we head out to his car and on the way I finally click that this is a door-to-door selling job, selling a TV and Internet provider. This was all during the very heavy snow we had a few years back, so I spent the next 4 hours trudging through residential streets, in snow up to knee height, wearing only a suit, absolutley freezing, knocking on peoples doors and generally being a nuisance to people. Never felt so much like scum, at one point I was waiting on the pavement while this guy knocked on an old ladys door, comes to the door looking pretty worse for wear, and before the guy gets halfway through his speach she says she buried her husband yesterday. Bloody hell it was an awful day.

Ended up having to get the train back into Glasgow to hear if we got the job (and more importantly, to get my car). Surprise surprise I got offered the job, I say "job", it was unpaid unless you sold anything, and if you did you seemed to get barely anything anyway. Still stayed polite, took his wee premade "congratulations on your job" card they give to everyone, and got out of there.
Pish day.