“I had several great interviews. I wore my dark suit with a simple tie and a white shirt. My wife buffed my dress shoes and I looked sharp, perhaps a little too sharp. I work in tech. The standard dress is very casual especially since I primarily do phone tech support. After a series of great interviews where the position was down to me and another, younger guy, I kept losing out. I really started to wonder if the suit made me seem old and out of touch. The next interview I had, I wore dress slacks, a white collared shirt, sweater, and a pair loafers. I landed that job. I can’t say that the way I dressed landed me the job, but it is the only thing that makes sense to me,” Daniel relayed to me in a phone interview. There is a famous quote from the 1997 movie Picture Picture that goes, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” Many people have taken this to mean the standard traditional “boardroom” dress; however, a survey by CareerBuilder showed that 67% of C-level and senior vice presidents regularly wear “business casual” to work. Of the two-thirds that wore business casual, 18% “regularly wear jeans or shorts.” So, how do you know how to dress for the job you want without coming off as too old or too casual?
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