On The (Apparently) Lost Art of Dressing for a Job Interview

It's what I call Career Fair at Colorado School of Mines, during which the students visit with prospective employers in the market for freshly minted scientists and engineers. I've seen a lot of very nicely dressed men today. Almost all of them wore clean, good-fitting suits with pressed shirts, and ties. They’ve recently had haircuts, and are even polishing their shoes. They look ready for the world.

The ladies, *sigh* I am sorry to say, are quite a different matter. Many of them look very put together. Great going, ladies! But, many others, so many more than the guys …well, let me tell you that as one who has interviewed people for jobs, I’m not particularly impressed. Thank goodness they haven’t been from the Geophysics Department ....

If you’ll indulge me and my apparently archaic thoughts for a moment, ladies, especially in this economy, you need to dress not just for the job you want now, but for the one you want in ten years. How you dress for an interview tells people a LOT about you. Unfortunately the famous quotation " don't judge a book by its cover " does not work here. You can say that’s just superficial malarkey but it’s really not. Regardless of how you'll wind up dressing once you're employed, looking polished to potential employers sends the message that you care about the details. And every career involves detail. It also tells people that you consider these opportunities important enough to dress for them. Particularly in this economy you want to be the candidate with the edge, and sometimes it makes all the difference to give an amount of thought to your appearance that you’d normally consider excessive.

So, this is just first contact, you say? A Career Fair is not *really* an interview, so you should look nice but don't need to look over the top? The person you’re speaking with today could well be same person who’ll interview you if your resume gets past the first review - and first impressions are often the most indelible.

That said, ladies, if you're trying to dress professionally then LEAVE THE FLIPPING FLIP-FLOPS AT HOME. I've lost count of the number of young women walking around in nice outfits in the past couple of days but who were wearing those cheap thong sandals you buy at Walmart for a buck. One of them was in desperate need of a pedicure, too. Now, I don’t know that they aren't changing into/out of better shoes for the situation but several were coming out of the Student Center—it’s a good bet that several of them wore that get-up into the Career Fair. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but seriously? C’mon, girls - if we can take the time to polish a decent pair of shoes that see the sidewalk maybe twice a year, then surely you can throw on a pair of close-toed heels and nylons for a few hours? There is a time and a place for sandals. An event connecting you to the world’s biggest and most enduring engineering firms is neither the time, nor the place.

I know that this one is vexing for many because we now seem so fixated on a comfort-is-king mentality but this is a sacrifice to comfort that you should consider making.

Hey I am not fashion stylist. Just sayin’.

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