It was snowing and sleeting out and we both made it on time.  I was early because I wanted to meet with the president, briefly, and get a couple words in his ear while showing him that I was the kind of client manager that will get up at 5:30 in the morning to say hi and make sure the meeting I scheduled went off with out any trouble.

I made it. 
The president of the company made it. 
The candidate was twenty minutes late.

Candidates in China are scarce and in demand but it is no excuse for being late for an interview.  When I worked in the US I was often told by my boss there, "if you don't have candidate control don't even send them into the interview."  He was right and I made a mistake yesterday when I prepped the candidate.  I failed to take the time to re-visit the concept that until he receives a job offer he has no opportunity with this client.  It might have made a difference if I had explained, again, that he was going to meet the president of the company and that we were all aranging our schedules around him for this meeting so punctuality was a must. 

When candidates get popular I often see them go through a prima donna phase where they act as if every call from a headhunter raises their market value and every meeting will result in an offer.  Many times their actions begin to betray an arrogance that ends up costing them the jobs they want.  I have seen candidates ask for bigger offices before they receive an offer, show up late for interviews, make outrageous salary demands at initial stages, and the list (unfortunately) goes on...