Candid, if an interviewer is worth his salt at all, he’ll weed out the “business phonies” pretty quickly. No one’s going to hire someone simply because they wore a tie (I hope).
One of the things that college graduates have to learn when entering the real world is what the rules and expectations are. And the expectation/rule is to dress nice for interviews. You can choose to obey it or not, but that is what our culture has maintained. Part of being ready to get a job is learning about what that job will require of you, interview included. My Public Speaking professor insists that you should never approach a job interview without researching the company and position, and I think she has a valid point.
I’m a college student and I can’t imagine any of my peers not understanding that to interview for a ‘real’ job you would want to dress up.
Ah well, AndyPolley my apologies. I apsolutely did not mean to dress a straw man in your thread, or produce a non Sequitur or some other heinious crime. My only excuse is that I rarely venture into the pit and am unfamiliar with the ettiquette here. I knew my story was only vaguely related (I did hint at that) but thought it would be OK to post here anyway. I promise to try to do better in the future.
Besides which, in person they were very sweet and unassuming guys. I waited tables way back then, when dinosaurs still walked the earth, and ended up waiting on them, when they had a concert here on their way to Japan, or somewhere.
I had no clue it was them until a fellow waitress told me. They were very polite, soft-spoken, sweet, kidded around with me (I’m a smartass as a waitress), and left me a fantastic tip. And all they had were beers.
There are also agencies who lend out, or give away “interview outfits”. The unemployment office has well done handouts with “dos and don’ts of interviewing” including appropriate attire, TV ads and popular shows feature bits and pieces about interviewing, as do “newzines” such as 48 hours, Dateline and other similar shows.
A person has to be living under a rock to not know the appropriate way to both dress and behave on an interview.
I work in Silicon Valley, and very few of the people I have interviewed have come in suits. I didn’t. College students do, but they can be excused. However, no one has come in anything inappropriate. It’s all about knowing the culture, and dressing as well as the people in it. We all dress comfortably here, including our CEO who disses ties. Around here, the technical experts who come for product sales pitches don’t wear suits, though the salesmen do.
But if you dress less well than you would for work (which I think is what the OP found) why would a boss be willing to bet you are going to dress better once you had the job?
You don’t have to call HR. Why not visit the place you’re going to be interviewing and see what people are wearing on the way in and out? I always make a trial run before I interview anyhow, so if I get lost it won’t be when it counts.
I didn’t mean to imply that you couldn’t or shouldn’t post your story. I thought it was interesting.
I only wanted to point out that “wearing jeans to an interview” is not the same “wearing ratty jeans to an interview and being smelly and dishevelled.”
Even those, like CandidGamera, who are opposed to corporate dress codes have never suggested that people should turn up unwashed and stinking.
Evil - man, you’ve got to loosen up a little. No, people who care how you look are not assholes. I’m a huge slob, I could care less how I dress - but even I understand that appropriate clothes a simply a tool of the job in a lot of cases. For example, I’m interning at an NGO in DC. I’m expected to wear a dress shirt, formal slacks and tie to work - every day, no exceptions. I’m expected to wear a suit when I go to the hill, or meetings with VIPS. This isn’t because my boss is an asshole, or any sort of bad man who’s getting off on a petty power trip. My boss expectes this because business attire is a tool for demonstrating respect for the people you’re working with, and for the job itself. If I were to wear a t-shirt and jeans to a Hill briefing, I’d look like an idiot, and that would make my boss look like an idiot. So I don’t do that.
Now, you could argue that this simply means the people not my boss who care about this are “assholes”. Ultimately, I don’t think I can convince you otherwise - you seem to take it as an article of faith that clothes shouldn’t matter. But, again speaking as someone to whom dressing even neatly does not come naturally - clothes do matter. It’s a part of the culture, just like etiquette or modesty taboos. And the entire business culture will not change simply to accomodate you.
Oh - and in case I haven’t made it clear, I don’t much care for your implication that my boss, professors, parents and co-workers are all “assholes”. It’s immature. Almost - dare I say? - assinine.
Not sure that professors constitute a very good example here.
I’m a grad student, and half the professors i’ve known during my undergraduate and graduate career teach in jeans or casual pants like khakis or chinos. Some are a little more formal than that, but very few actually wear a tie, and even fewer a formal jacket or a suit.*
Most of my experience is in the humanities and social sciences; things might be different in the hard sciences (but i don’t really think so), and they are most likely different in places like law schools and business colleges.
I don’t think I’ve ever worn anything but jeans and casual clothes for any photography position I’ve interviewed for. Granted, they were nice jeans, and nice sneakers, but photographers are kind of notorious for not dressing up. It never seems to have mattered much with the person interviewing me. They were usually just as casual as I.
The rest of your points (portfolio presentation, not smelling of dope, etc.) I agree with, but I don’t see the problem with showing up in jeans for a photography interview. And (just to be honest) at $20/hour you’re not going to be picking from the finest pool of talent, anyway. I’m not saying you’re underpaying that position; I’m just saying that the types of photographers who take good pictures, know how to present themselves and their work, are probably doing something else.
This is an interesting thought, and worth exploring. CandidGamera, why is this corporate entity going to start paying you? As cool as it would be if they were paying you simply to be your awesome self, I do not believe this is the case. Rather, I would hazard a guess that they intend to pay you in exchance for a service you will provide for them. Moreover, they will expect you to perform this service to such specifications as they choose, within fairly tight tolerances.
So, let me ask you - why should I believe that you will perform such services as I require, in precisely the manner that I require, if you aren’t willing to dress in a way that you could reasonably expect I would wish? And if I can’t reasonably believe this, then why should I hire you and pay you at all?
This wasn’t asked of me, but I’m going to respond to it anyway. I’d like to know, since you said you’d be hiring someone to perform a particular service for you, some kind of function which you cannot provide for yourself and thus gives value to the efforts of the person who can provide it, in what way does the clothing of that indivudal have any direct bearing on the particular labor you wish to purchase?
Point taken. I only mentioned professors because one of mine was kind enough to take me aside before I started an internship in DC, and make very clear to me that I’d be expected to dress well, etc.
It bears on the labor because I stated that the labor must be performed to my specifications. I want to hire someone who can (a) follow instructions and (b) use his/her common sense to anticipate basic instructions I’m very likely to give - for example, “Clean the paintbrushes after you finish using them.”
If someone shows up to an interview dressed in a way that is plainly inappropriate for that interview, then I’ll conclude that either this person wasn’t able to (b) use his/her common sense to anticipate basic, common requirements, or (a) chose not to follow the instructions his/her common sense provided. All of this has already been mentioned, but it bears repeating - I’m very unlikely to hire someone with these problems. I suppose I might hire such a person anyway, if they had a truly unique or rare skill-set - if I need someone who’s fluent in Pashtun, Farsi, Arabic and English, and the only person like that I can find dresses like a bum, I’ll probably hire this person. But I’ll take pains to tell him/her that changes are required - and if they aren’t forthcoming, I’ll keep looking for a replacement.
Perhaps you misunderstood the question. What direct relationship does manner of dress have with performing a particular function? I am a computer engineer, so let’s use that for an example. What relationship to digital logic design do my pants have?
Now we’re getting somewhere. You want someone you are sure will follow your orders and do only what you have specifically asked for.
Common sense dictates to me that I wear clothing that will provide adequate skin coverage and allow me to be comfortable while spending many hours hunched over a keyboard. It does not dictate to me to ‘allow the boss to micromanage my comfort level.’
You view people who dress in a comfortable yet clean and neat manner as having a problem. Why?
Because I’ll do the job the best for the lowest cost to the business. It’s called capitalism. Any IT business that doesn’t want to hire me because I show up in a polo shirt and casual slacks - I don’t want to work for. To those who suggest people should just know to show up with a certain level of dress - that’s ridiculous. Business suits aren’t appropriate for McDonald’s interview, and a t-shirt and jams aren’t good for an executive vice president, and between those extremes, there’s a lot of grey area. Polo shirt and casual slacks, clean and well-kempt, is a nice middle of the road that should be palatable to all but the most executive positions, in my opinion.
If someone shows up in that attire, and the interviewer thinks “this person should’ve known to wear a suit” - maybe the interviewer shjould check the ad placed for the position to make sure it said ‘Psychic abilities required.’
I don’t often wear a suit, but it would NEVER occur to me to wear jeans to an interview. I usually dress casually, which means slacks, belt, nice shirt ( buttoned up to the last button) and nice shoes.
However, no one has come in anything inappropriate. It’s all about knowing the culture, and dressing as well as the people in it. We all dress comfortably here, including our CEO who disses ties. Around here, the technical experts who come for product sales pitches don’t wear suits, though the salesmen do.
Point taken. I only mentioned professors because one of mine was kind enough to take me aside before I started an internship in DC, and make very clear to me that I’d be expected to dress well, etc.