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By Perri Capell
From The Wall Street Journal Online

Question: I'm job hunting but don't want to lose my current job until I find another. I rarely leave my desk or the office, so it's difficult to get away for interviews. I've called in sick but this means I miss a day of work when I only need a couple of hours off. How can I leave the office for a few hours to interview without faking an illness?

Answer: My first suggestion is to stop calling in sick when you aren't ill. This tactic only works a few times without raising suspicion, and most bosses don't like it.

"It's a pet peeve of mine when people ask for sick time off, and they aren't sick," says Keith Alper, chief executive officer of Creative Producers Group Inc., a St. Louis, Mo., company with about 50 employees.

It's admirable that you rarely leave your office during workdays, but it isn't helping your career quest. Moreover, as the war for talent has escalated, employers are doing more to retain current workers, notes Patrick Dailey, director of human resources for TXU Energy, a unit of TXU Corp. in Dallas. Asking for a few hours of personal time occasionally shouldn't jeopardize your job, and you'll likely feel better about yourself if you tell the truth, he says.

Check your company's employment policies to determine how much personal time you have and how it can be taken. Some companies lump sick days and personal days into paid-time-off banks that you can withdraw from in certain increments. "See what kind of mechanism you can leverage so you don't have to misrepresent your absence," says Mr. Dailey.

At Mr. Alper's company, asking to take off personal time is code for having a medical or other personal appointment and "when someone says that, you don't ask the reason," he says.

It may be less disruptive to your current job if you clump interviews together in a batch. You also can schedule them early or late in the day or around the lunch hour. This way, you'll either arrive a little late in the morning, be gone for an extra hour at lunch or have to leave work a bit early. None of these behaviors are unusual and shouldn't interfere with getting your work done.

Mr. Alper says his team often meets potential candidates at 7:30 a.m. for coffee near their offices so they aren't inconvenienced by interviewing. "If an employer wants to meet you, they will make the time for you because it's in their best interests," he says.

For some candidates, job hunting while working may have an unexpected benefit. Bosses with good radar often know when an employee has started looking elsewhere. If you're a valued staffer, your manager may try to find out if you're unhappy or sweeten the pot to keep you from leaving. On the other hand, if you aren't a good performer, your company may encourage you to take off personal time because it wants you to leave.

"We know when someone is looking and if we really want to keep them, we find out what the issues are," says Mr. Alper. "If we aren't interested, we give them plenty of time to look."

Have a question about job hunting or career management? Send it to Perri Capell. If you don't want your name used in our column, please indicate that. Due to the volume of mail received, we regret that we cannot answer every question.