A full grown adult dressing like he’s 15 is just as much a “signaling pathway” as wearing a suit. They all wear the same uniform to try to show they are such a brilliant engineer they don’t need to dress up. It’s conformity of non-conformity.
The never wearing a suit in the software industry thing is bullshit. I’ve been on site at software companies and at trade shows with all manner of software people from companies ranging from startups to Google or Microsoft. When the occasion calls for it, the senior ones manage to wear a suit or at least a jacket and dress pants.
No. I wouldn’t, although I haven’t been to career fair for a job in at least 15 years.
I work in career field (industrial maintenance) which is experiencing almost terminal levels of personnel shortage. Getting qualified people to show up for career fairs is a more urgent need than having them arrive wearing a suit and tie. If they did wear an outfit like that,then it would tell me that they were desperate for work for some reason and that would not be a good sign.
My last in-person interview was four years agin and I wore a sweater,jeans and steel-toed boots. I got the job but then turned it down for much higher paying long-term contract role. Going forward, I’ll continue to dress in the same manner for interviews as what I know and what I can do would always trump what I’m wearing.
I would expect a person to dress for the interview, not for the job. I worked in a jeans and sneakers fields for many years, but I would never have shown up for an interview dressed that way.
T-shirts and jeans are comfortable, practical clothes, and default attire for any situation that doesn’t require more. Suits are precisely the opposite.
It’s rare for most engineers to interact directly with clients, but when they do they often dress up. It has nothing to do with day to day life. Trade shows are certainly not representative.
Steve Jobs wore jeans and a turtleneck in public. Sergei Brin wears jeans and a t-shirt. Mark Zuckerburg wears jeans and a hoodie.
Anyway, I’m not saying that this is the dress code for everyone in software, or even every software engineer in Silicon Valley. It’s just my personal experience in a certain corner of the industry.
Well, my point is that if you were really all that amazingly awesome to work for, word would get around, and you’d get good applicants that way. Probably enough to fill your needs. But you’re apparently not getting enough good applicants to fill your needs without flogging yourselves at job fairs, so you might be somewhat less awesome to work for than you seem to think you are.
And 1 step up from a polo is a button down shirt +/- tie. A step up from that is a shirt, tie, and sport coat. A step up from that is a full-on suit.
These threads come up regularly and the replies would make you think that 90% of the population works for the computer gaming industry. You guys are really vocal about how bad you think suits are.
I voted for the suit but that’s not completely true. 100% for job interviews. For job fairs it depends. Some are just companies handing out flyers and the people there have nothing to do with the hiring process. It doesn’t much matter there.
Its always easier to dress down to the level of the company once you are hired and get a feel for the corporate culture than it is to under dress for an interview and overcome that first impression.
Microsoft, Google, Siemens, etc, were all at the career fair, so I don’t think it’s a matter of being some awful place that’s incapable of getting applicants. Your posts come off like you think career fairs are seas of terminal desperation for both applicants and employers. That’s the exact opposite of my experience.
I can maybe see a level with just button up. But the next two things you list are equivalent to me.
This post makes it sound like you think technical skills are all that matters, and soft skills/personality are pointless things to select for. And while a very few companies probably do care about technical skills to the exclusion of all else, the rest of us have to work with other people, and the soft skills are far more important than the technical skills.
To me, wearing a suit to the interview is about showing respect to the interviewer, and the time taken to interview you. Let’s not pretend wearing a suit is some onerous task akin to diving through a flaming hoop with juggling pineapples. You go to the store, get a suit, and stick it in your closet for the 3 times a year it’s appropriate to wear one. If you can’t even do that, why do I think you’re going to update your task list, show up to planning meetings on time, or follow the standards for whatever job you do?
You probably won’t get the chance to overcome the first impression in an interview. If you aren’t applying at a company where suits are laughed at, or are lucky enough that all levels of your first interview are with people who don’t care - you probably won’t make round two - someone will nix you for “not knowing how to dress at an interview and therefore, being clueless about business necessities.”
Not dressing, but language, one of the last people I hired when I was working we almost didn’t hire. She dressed fine (and hid her tattoos appropriately for the interview), but at one point during her final round of interviews - not talking to me - the hiring manager - but with another manager she’d be working with - she let slip the word “bitch.” We hired her anyway, she was by far the best candidate - but did have a fairly long discussion about someone who, if they couldn’t watch their mouth in an interview, might not watch their mouth when talking to our vendors or our customers. Over “bitch” - which is slightly above “damn” on the scale of offensive words. If she had said “fuck” we wouldn’t have hired her.
Now, I’ve been known to say “fuck” at work. But that doesn’t mean I’d let lose with it in a job interview.
We’re a very informal society. The only people here who wear suits on a regular basis are lawyers appearing in court, and grooms. For everyone else, formal wear is a button-down shirt and khakis. That’s what I wore to court last month - where I served as a translator - and that’s what I used to wear to job interviews. The last time I wore a suit and tie was in 2006, and even then I was overdressed.
Yeah, I gotta agree with this. My ex-wife runs an enormous division of one of the largest defense contractors in the world. They develop software and it’s all suit and tie work.
As for the ‘middle manager incompetent’ thing? On the other side - barring true standouts - doing the ‘engineer dress’ thing just means ‘that’s someone who’s content to work for me for the next 20 years’.
I’m not in the IT industry and if I were interviewing, say a machinist or a welder, it might be necessary to take them out onto a shop floor and provide me with a hands-on skills demonstration. That would usually require steel toed shoes or boots and might require them becoming dirty or oily accidentally. That would ruin a suit.
I know as I have seen it happen.
For a technical job in industrial maintenance (other than a supervisory, managerial,planning or scheduling role) I would expect people to come to interviews dressed for a tour of the shop/plant and perhaps a practical skills assessment. That’s why I would be surprised if they wore a suit.
There is nothing wrong with the “always dress one level up” philosophy, but at a job fair one really doesn’t know what that level is. In that case, I would always go with a suit.
I would hope that for such an interview a little warning about what was going to be expected would be given when setting it up. For such jobs an initial interview could be a talk with someone in H.R. used to prune down the number of applicants. Or it could be a test of your abilities. A little warning would be nice.
If any “warning” would be provided it would be during an initial phone interview. Other than that,the assumption would be that a written maintenance test would be given and a shop/factory tour for applicants who passed the written exam. The ones who did not pass the written exam would be dismissed and those who did would be given a tour of the facilities and perhaps a brief hands-on assessment.
HR is largely useless for skilled trades jobs beyond performing background checks and scheduling interviews and drug screens. It’s one of those jobs where if you know more than a little bit, you are either doing it or you should be.
One of my good friends has a husband who is a machinist. He was hired at his job because he showed up in dress pants and a shirt with a tie - not an expensive suit and tie, but black Dockers or something along those lines (don’t show a lot of dirt, dressier than jeans). And when taken in back to look at the equipment - he TUCKED HIS TIE INTO HIS SHIRT.
He showed by those two actions that he had respect for the management and respect for safety. And wearing the tie allowed him to illustrate that very effectively.
Apparently, equally skilled people didn’t bother with the tie.
Now, maybe he trashed a white dress shirt (bought at Goodwill for $4 because what use does a machinist have for a good dress shirt other than job interviews and funerals). But it paid out in a job.
What does being in Israel have to do with it?