Can Rain Hurt Your Interview? Freakonomics Blog Says “Maybe”

Forget economic forecasts. It’s the weather forecast you should really be watching! Well… sort of.

According to two smart dudes from the University of Toronto, medical school applicants who interview on a rainy day fare ever-so-slightly worse than their sunny day counterparts (their scores were one percent lower).

I don’t know if these findings are statistically significant or if causation can be established (hell, I can barely spell statistically), but I do know that crummy weather impacts mood. My mood.  And whether the rain is making the interviewer cranky or the interviewee nervous,  it makes sense that the whole meeting might go a little less than perfect.

One commenter has a solution: bring up the weather early on in the interview. She says that if an interviewer is made aware of the weather (and its possible impact on their frame of mind), they’re less likely to attribute negativity to you as a candidate. Of course, you’d have to weigh out the potential benefit of talking about the weather with the drawback of it being a universally understood awkwardness indicator.

Is she right? Who knows. Still, it’s an interesting phenomenon to think about.

For what it’s worth, San Francisco’s forecast is cloudy and/or wet through Sunday.