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Dress advice for interviews

Paul Andrew Cunningham

My daughter is about to graduate from university and is starting to attend interviews. As her dad, in his 60s, I am the least qualified person in the universe to offer advice. What advice on dress would you offer her?

Parents
  • I haven't read these discussion boards for some time, and I acknowledge many of the responses so far as from our seasoned and well respected HR professionals. However, I am struggling to comprehend why we are offering advice on what someone should wear to an interview?

    Surely an individual should wear whatever they feel appropriate, be that a dress, suit, skirt, trousers, jeans or swimming costume - although if someone turned up for an interview for an office job, I would worry they may get cold in the latter!
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  • I haven't read these discussion boards for some time, and I acknowledge many of the responses so far as from our seasoned and well respected HR professionals. However, I am struggling to comprehend why we are offering advice on what someone should wear to an interview?

    Surely an individual should wear whatever they feel appropriate, be that a dress, suit, skirt, trousers, jeans or swimming costume - although if someone turned up for an interview for an office job, I would worry they may get cold in the latter!
Children
  • in reply to Linda

    Because inevitably (and interviewers only being human) there are judgements made about candidates at all sorts of levels. Much of the literature says we make some judgements in 10-30 seconds. What someone wears therefore is an important part of their first impression.

    If a candidate did turn up in a swimming costume then its highly unlikely in 99/100 workplaces they would be starting on a level playing field.

    Is this right? Well that's probably a subject for an interesting essay but does it happen? Certainly. So whilst as a HR practitioner I might want to be training out unconscious bias and designing schemes to minimise it, as a candidate or as a dad of a candidate taking some simple steps seems eminently sensible to me.

  • in reply to Linda
    Don't think Jean's would impressive anyone!
  • in reply to Linda
    Couldn't agree with you more Linda, I'm also baffled as to why the amount of makeup a person chooses to wear to an interview would make a blind bit of difference, but maybe that's just me...
  • in reply to Amy Humphreys
    The clue is in the question Amy. "Make up" = invent. Like Keith we make judgements - thats what interviews are for.

    It might not be right but thats how we judge people in interviews. By how they dress/look, behave, speak and reply to questions.

    Perhaps it may be better if we all wore Chairman Mao suits? ;-)
  • in reply to Linda
    Hi Linda
    We are offering advice on what to wear to an interview because someone asked us for our advice. No one is arguing for HR to have a seat on the board to uphold dress codes at interview or that this is what the profession is for. One of our virtual colleagues has simply come to his network for a bit of advice for his daughter. Not every post on here deals with obscure legal points.