How should I dress for an interview over Teams (with camera on). I assume dress shirt and tie. Is a jacket necessary? This is an IT position but not in a managerial role, per se. However, the role would liaison with management (that I am sure will be represented in the interview). Here’s the quandary:
a) Maybe I should wear a jacket (i.e., sport coat, suit jacket) to be safe?
b) If I appear overdressed, could that be bad?
FYI: Google (or AI) suggests business casual. Maybe a nice sweater, solid neutral color? My house is a tad chilly.
Wear the same thing you would wear for an in-person interview, at least from the waist up. Make sure the background for your teleconference is neutral or professional. No clutter, no beds, etc. use a fake background if you need to.
And honestly - just dress your whole body for the interview. You don’t want to be preoccupied with thoughts of “don’t stand up! don’t stand up!” the entire time.
I’m a hiring manager on an IT program that does Teams interviews: wear at least a tie, if not also a jacket. A nice sweater is alright if there’s a tie visible underneath. In short, wear a tie. Even if it’s a clip-on.
Being overdressed is always better than being underdressed…though I’ll admit that wearing, like, a tux might be questionable.
@Jinx , where is this interview? If in Silicon Valley, for the position you describe, no jacket, no tie. You could possibly wear a jacket, but no tie.
Elsewhere in the country, the answer is likely to change. For example I’ve flown to the Midwest for an engineering interview (in Columbus OH; not a management position) and if it was there then I’d say both a sport coat jacket and a tie.
Former tech engineering director here in SV in the SFBA CA.
IT owner here, we are 100% virtual since Covid. I really don’t care if you wear a jacket or tie. Be on time, don’t be a slob, don’t google the answers to my questions DURING THE INTERVIEW!
I’ve had maybe 1 or 2 out of the last 20+ male candidates I’ve interviewed on Zoom/Teams wear a tie.
In fact I hardly ever see anyone in our office in a tie since we returned to the office. It was already dying before the pandemic, but it’s all but gone now.
We had the entire executive team on stage a couple of weeks ago. All the men were wearing suits, but no ties. Salespeople and consultants coming to visit us also seem to have given up ties.
Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Canada: “Kids these days! Get off my lawn!”
I wore my gown all the time for hearings in Federal Court and other courts by zoom during covid. I guess I’m old. At least I wasn’t wearing an onion on my belt.
Hehehe, yeah. Don’t look up the answers if you don’t know it. Do tell them that you don’t know the answer off the top of your head, but also tell them where you’d find the answer. I was once asked in an interview what port LDAP normally uses. I said I didn’t know, but /etc/services on any Unix box would tell me pretty quickly.
I’m assuming the joke worked at the time because the resolution of the camera and speed of the internet were so terrible that it was (almost) plausible for that sort of trick to work. Obviously these days it would be (even more) laughable to try it.
My understanding is that as long as you’re wearing business attire (so, no tuxes or ball gowns), it’s pretty much impossible to overdress for a white collar job interview. Overdressing just communicates that you’re serious about wanting the job.
But I’ve participated in fewer than a half-dozen interviews (from the interviewer’s side) in my life, so I’m definitely not an expert.
Folks who interview: have you ever given an applicant less of a chance because they were overdressed for the interview? Would you ever?
I interview a LOT of people as a secondary interviewer between the hiring manager and the hiring manager’s manager. Probably more than 15 per year.
It definitely gives off “out of touch” vibes to me, but I’m generally focused on technical questions in interviews. But that may just be my personal bias. For all I know other interviewers may be taking off points for not wearing a tie.
Basically since COVID no one seems to know what the dress code even is. Officially, sneakers aren’t allowed, but half the employees are in sneakers. If someone comes in in ripped jeans, someone might have a friendly word.
Yes. The people I’ve interviewed have generally been candidates for programmer/analyst type positions in large software projects, where casual dress (or worse) was part of the culture, even in large organizations that had dress codes for most of the staff. If anyone came in dressed in a suit and tie for such an interview, I’d immediately downgrade that individual as someone who didn’t understand the culture, or someone who lacked confidence in his technical skills. I was looking for people who would come in with the attitude that “my resume speaks for itself”, and also “this is how I look when I’m tracking down an obscure software bug at two o’clock in the morning while surviving on coffee and potato chips”.
It all depends on the job and the industry, but even in my consulting days when my clients were major corporations, my dress standard was always no more than business casual because I knew that if I was hired it would be on the strength of my accomplishments and not the extent to which I tried to impress them with my wardrobe.
That said, there are many situations where being well-dressed is important, and shows respect for those you’re interacting with. But many others where it’s mostly irrelevant.
At my former job (recently laid off), I THINK the official dress code was business casual, but nobody in my office followed that - jeans (or shorts) and a t-shirt were the rule. maybe jeans and a polo. Definite athletic shoes on feet…
Now once every other year we would have customers and were expected to dress up, but other than that, just about anything goes.
Brian
If the job needs a tie (even if just for the interview), I probably don’t want the job…
(I work in software development but others in the office were support or tech writers - even the marketing folks didn’t really dress up)
In education, generally I’d expect people to dress up for interviews, and not for work. When I’ve had co-workers who came to school in a suit and tie every day, I confess I’ve found myself a bit skeptical: it comes across as a bit superficial, focused more on appearances than functionality. One of the worst teachers I’ve known was the sharpest dresser.
But during interviews? Yeah, pull out the stops. At least, that’s what I’d expect.
