How To Dress For An Interview

By Jason Taingahue
Learning how to dress for an interview is just as important as the verbal part of the interview as well.

An interviewer will examine the grooming of a person as soon as they walk through that door, and a well groomed person gets the thumbs up from an employer because as they say "First impressions do count".

So how do we go about finding the right clothes for an interview? What do you wear, and how do you know that they are the right type of clothes to wear to a particular type of interview?

First of all, to learn how to dress for an interview, we must have a full understanding what type of job we are going to be interviewed for. Where as an office job would require grooming at the higher level to that of a labouring job which would require a little bit more a casual approach.

To dress for an interview the first thing we need is clothes. Sometimes we may have to go out and buy a few extra clothes, but most times we are able to whip something together out of our own selection that we have in our own home.



Even if you do not have the appropriate clothes to dress for an interview, or are one or two garments out, ask a friend/brother/sister if they may have some to borrow for the interview. I mean it's only for an hour or so. I mean what could happen to those clothes within that little time, even if they are reluctant to lend you those clothes.

Plead your case to them and let them know how important the job is to you, and that if anything happens to the clothes, you will gladly replace them. That should take a little bit of the burden off there shoulders knowing that they will be replaced if something does happen to them.

Once you have the right clothes through the options that I have just given you, we now need to groom them. In grooming them I mean, do they need another wash or is there a button or something missing off the shirt or pants?? If so, these problems need to be addressed immediately.

Once these have been solved then we can move onto the next phase of learning how to dress for an interview, which is having the creases on shirts and trousers nicely ironed. That's right, making sure it is near to perfect.
Once all this has been done, we must then choose the appropriate socks in which case the standard black or white socks always covers most suited wear, when learning how to dress for an interview.

Now choosing a correct shoe will be the next part of our learning how to dress for an interview. In most cases the standard brown pants/dress with brown shoes or black pants/dress with black shoes is more than appropriate. Making sure that the shoe is spick and span is simple. A good polish for your shoe will do the trick in this case.

Now that we have the shoes and socks, pants or dress sorted, we need a shirt. I would be inclined to stick with a white shirt, as this is not to dressy as is a lot of coloured shirts and also needs a lot of care and attention given to it, before going to the interview , because white is very easy to get dirty.

Lastly depending on the weather we may need a jacket as well. A zip up jacket is good. Standard colour of black, brown or even grey sometimes if possible is perfect. In addition, this will protect the white shirt from getting rain spots on it, which is not a good look when walking into the interview room.

Now that you have learnt how to dress for an interview, go get in the shower and chuck the clothes on that been mentioned and last but not least, good luck.

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