Often times, people’s first judgments about you are not your words, but your look.
I know it sounds very biased and unrealistic, but it is very true. From my experience of interacting with employers on days of interviews and networking opportunities, they have been expecting you to look and to dress professionally. More importantly, employers see that your appearances and looks show your attitude toward them.
Learning how to dress is an important lesson to be learned because you will be preparing to dress up every single day of your working schedule! Nowadays, the career centers at colleges and universities are preparing students for different kinds of career related workshops.
At Saint John’s University, one of the popular workshops is called Dress for Success. Dress for Success is hosted one to two times throughout the school year and the university would invite professionals from the field to teach students. In my opinion, this is one of the many valuable workshops during your college career. It is free and you get to connect with hardworking students like you.
Whether or not you are planning for an interview, you should always be on a lookout for your appearance.
You do not need to dress like going to fashion show, however, you need to dress appropriate for the occasion. For example if you have a important meeting at work that you need to go to, then I would suggest that you should be highly cautious in terms of what you are wearing. In my example, I recommend that you make sure that your blouse is ironed, your pants are fit and not too small, your shoes are appropriate, and if you are a female, your makeup is not too excessive and catch other people’s attention.
In another example that I would give for females especially is the length of the skirts and the height of the heels. In my point of view, the skirts should be at least down to the knee and not shorter. The colors of the skirts should not be extremely bright colors.
For shoes with heels, I would say to avoid wearing them on the first day of interview. I would wear flats. The reason that I say this is because you want to be as comfortable as you can when walking and you want to fit into the environment. Knowing how to dress and buying the right clothes help pave your way to success.
Learning is a process. More importantly, the ability to improve continuously is essential to a fruitful life.
