Comment by robalfonso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robalfonso | Hacker News Reader

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I work at a very casual office, when I've interviewed I've seen just about everything from jeans/t-shirt to a suit. My take away is "look nice" regardless of what level of dress you have chosen. I've been impressed by candidates that wore suits. It shows they understand their appearance is important, however, it is not a deciding factor in the job, just a nice to have. Also had people show up in a suit that is 10 years out of style or with hideous tie,etc. They would have been far better off to come in khakis and a polo.

Here are my basic rules on Interview dressing:

1 When in doubt, wear a suit. For all lifes clothing decisions, better to be over, than under dressed 2 Ask a recruiter whats appropriate, if you are dealing with one. 3 Whatever you wear, make sure it looks nice (no stains, ironed, fits well,etc)

How someone is dressed is a very small part of hiring (in the tech world, less so for other professions), but it does speak to attention to detail, and how they see themselves. Given two equally skilled candidates the one who presents themselves best (attire wise) is going to get the nod.

> Also had people show up in a suit that is 10 years out of style or with hideous tie,etc.

And a sense of fashion is relevant to the job...how, exactly?

Actually, I don't care...but for me what it speaks to is self-awareness. Many developers get caught up in their own little world. If they can't be bothered to think about how others perceive them it also points to all kinds of other things they neglect to consider.

This is RTFM for life type stuff. Seriously its two seconds to google for "rules of the interview" or some other such thing. Do you know any Good devs who wouldn't reference the docs for an api they are working on? Same type of thing, read the docs goes along way with a lot of things.

Its not a deal breaker, but when you have limited time in which to evaluate someone you learn to have lots of little things add up to a picture of someone. That's what I mean by that.

It's likely that at some point in your career you will have to interact with clients or present in front of an outside audience. What you wear and how you present yourself reflects on your company.

So, let me make sure I'm understanding what you're saying, here. You would reject a candidate for a software developer position (or any other mostly "back end" role) because that person may or may not some day end up making a presentation to people outside of the company?

Are you sure you don't want to take a bit of time and rethink that?

> 1 When in doubt, wear a suit

As general advice, this is wrong. There are a lot of positions where wearing a suit to the interview would automatically mean you won't get hired.

Of course, it depends on the locale, the position, &c, but the idea that a suit is always safe is somewhat outdated.

I will slightly adjust that to - it depends on the company (do your research). Clearly if you are applying for a startup of early 20 somethings a suit makes zero sense (but then there is less doubt, no?)

Agreed - overdressed loses no points; underdressed can. ( So Pascal's observation holds?)

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