got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

[digital_blue]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

I have done oodles of interviewing/hiring in the past, and here's what I would say is generally the "correct" way to determine dress code for an interview. Consider the attire of those who work in a similar role to you with that company, and dress up one notch. If you were applying for a position as a lifeguard or nightclub bouncer, wearing a suit to an interview is probably a little "out of touch" with the position you're applying for. Same could apply to any number of positions. However, if "business casual" rules the day at the company you're looking at, a suit is probably just the right pick, though you can likely ditch the tie. If it's a white collar farm, full suit with tie is a must. If they all wear full suits and ties, you ought to make sure it's a nice suit you've got on.

But again, if they're all walking around in polo shirts and khakis, I'd say a decent suit and no tie is reasonable, unless you are certain that the person interviewing you will be wearing one. Though cliche, it's true that you only get one chance to make a first impression, and a little recon goes a long way. If you're not up for doing it "right', your chances of landing the job drop significantly anyway.

db

[theprez98]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

I am curious what people's opinions on this is. Personally, I haven't found advanced degrees to be at all valuable when it comes to promotions and advancement. In my experience, performance is all that matters.

Maybe that's different if you are switching jobs and trying to switch up to a higher level position. What do you guys think?

As I begin the transition from military life to looking for a "real" job (just kidding) I find that advanced degrees may help as far as starting out at a higher salary. I'm not sure that a specific advanced degree may get someone a job over someone else, but spending a year and a half getting a master's degree gives me a little bit better start in the salary category (at least that's what I'm seeing in very early job exploration).

[DaKahuna]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

Throughout my carieer in IT it has been standard for anyone coming in for an internview, unless it is an internal candidate, to dress in a suit. Even when hiring entry level systems administrators, who would possibly never wear a suit to work, it is imperative to make that first impression a good one and nothing does it better than someone who dresses sharply.

Hopefully things went well for you today.

[VAX_to_PBX]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

Just go to a department store, and get a blue collar special, or white collar(it's all yuppie.)

Going strait out, and getting a job after graduating with anything less than a masters is a bad idea.

A B.S. in CS may get you a job configuring, and programming CNC machines where I live. If the grungy production company is hard up.

Most graduate students here go do tech support job's, or are smart enough to get involved with government funded research for at least 4 year's, and call it work experience on there resumes.

You'll probably end up doing entry level grunt work for the next two year's till you get promoted to slightly more automated grunt work(reality.)

I'm not a employer. I have been working in various IT, and engineering fields for a while though. Unfortunately I still have to do manual labor in most of them, but it's nice to wear what I want, and do what I want most times.

Humor:..Just don't get a job as a webmaster for a porn site, and then get fired for stealing the scattered underwear(like some people here...)

[astcell]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

Researching the company is a great idea. I found a great job at great pay and then researched the company:

They were Asian based.
One week vacation per year, they would tell you when you could take it.
Overtime work expected to be performed freely and willingly.
The company comes before anything else, even though the job is in CA.
If you do not perform you are terminated.
You are expected to bow slightly to your superiors.
They view computers as a necessary evil in the company and see it as a waste of funds.

Needless to say when I went for the interview I did not care if I got the job or not. So research pays off in both directions.

And YES WEAR A SUIT. Borrow one from a family member. Hit the Goodwill store and promise to pay them with your first check. And buy 2 ties, in case there is a second interview.

When you start work, wear the suit to work the first day. Also wear it the second day and you may have your boss say "We hate ties, just (insert uniform here) will be fine." Then you can change.

Good luck.

[Ljuboja]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

I'm currently still an undergraduate, not many employer's will take me on yet. They have told me to re-contact them once i get my degree. This seem's to be the common response i have come across. One company is an IT Consultancy company, which as you can guess - formal dress sense. So i do believe degrees can earn you a advance start in the IT field. Although ideally i would like a system administrator role. I have alway's assumed no matter how casual the current employees dress, alway's look the part come the interview. I don't know how many times i have herd them say, "we dress casual on a daily basis, but come a formal day that consist's of client meeting etc, we dress formally". I can't say i am speaking from experience here like TheCotMan is.

I also have come to the conclusion that maybe Master's degree's can be a step too far with no work experience, coming across as over-qualified for many roles. Especially those starting their long career path.

Is the best approach, achieving a degree first, then working in your favoured role for say 3 year's for arguement's sake, then if your in a happy position with possible career boost's, then undertake a Master's degree.

On the otherhand as aforementioned - PhD's for reasearch based work placement's are ideal to the candidate.

Can someone with experience, update me with potential - valueable knowledge of wisdom on this matter - please?

[TheCotMan]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

Can someone with experience, update me with potential - valueable knowledge of wisdom on this matter - please?

I think one point has been established about such an answer:
Even people with experience disagree because their experiences are different from each other on this matter.

Best answer with above considered?
"It depends."

[VAX_to_PBX]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

No offense, but telling someone to just wear a suit is a pretty dumbed up response.

If you wear some hand puppet suit to a job you're not gonna get hired. They'll probably take it as a sign of a inexperienced potential employee which is bad in the IT Industry.

I'm not sure how anyone becomes an "expert" on applying for a job, but it'd probably be wise to take advice from people who are actually employed, or have broad experience in a scouting, or recruitment firm(not people who are unemployed, and living with there parents cough..cough [name excluded] .)

Also most of the people who work at my company where wearing khakis, and typical shirt, and tie combinations. That's what I was wearing when I got a senior position, and I was a first year grad student.

My only advice is finish college, and don't be one of those people who just settle for certification's then bitch year's later when they can't advance in the career path(cough...cough another name excluded.)

TIP: Networking Solution company's who work through contracts will most likely hire you within 24 hours. It's mostly wiring, and implementation work.

[Floydr47]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

The most important thing in the interview is to have confidence in yourself. What you wear matters little if it is what would be reasonably expected for the position you are applying for. I may be the wrong one to give this advice, as I am not in the IT field, but it does come from about 35 years of work experience. Once, years ago, work was slow and I went to a construction company to apply for a job. The foreman asked me if I could operate a D-6 Caterpiller...I told him I was the best damned catskinner he ever seen. The fact of the matter was that even though I had never operated a bulldozer before, I needed the job and had enough confidence in my ability to know that I would have it figured out by lunchtime. I simply fell back on knowledge that I had gained as a long haul trucker. My advice, do what you know how to do and bluff your way through the rest. If you have confidence in yourself, the boss will see it.

[Ljuboja]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

Ageism, affect's one in a few....

[reflect]

[VAX_to_PBX]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

The most important thing in the interview is to have confidence in yourself. What you wear matters little if it is what would be reasonably expected for the position you are applying for. I may be the wrong one to give this advice, as I am not in the IT field, but it does come from about 35 years of work experience. Once, years ago, work was slow and I went to a construction company to apply for a job. The foreman asked me if I could operate a D-6 Caterpiller...I told him I was the best damned catskinner he ever seen. The fact of the matter was that even though I had never operated a bulldozer before, I needed the job and had enough confidence in my ability to know that I would have it figured out by lunchtime. I simply fell back on knowledge that I had gained as a long haul trucker. My advice, do what you know how to do and bluff your way through the rest. If you have confidence in yourself, the boss will see it.

Part of that trait didn't seep down to the Nintendo Generation. We didn't have to do daily manual labor as kids hence the reason we can't start out any production, or manual labor job keeping up to pace.

Most of the older generations are completely ignorant to the facts when they go around calling younger people worthless, and/or lazy. If we had to work on farms, or repair, and operate machinery since elementary school we could do all that stuff the first day too. The modernized world(post automation awareness) has made all of us skill less, and too layed back.

I still managed to hold heavy production jobs through college that most older people couldn't keep. I wouldn't wish that type of work on anyone. What makes manual labor worse is ass holes, and 'straw bosses' who are just lazy assholes, and burn outs with seniority.

If you're stuck doing that type of work you may want to consider some extended curriculum, so you at least have a good probability of living ten year's if you make it to retirement/American Dream.

A huge percentage of older people who retire from a life of manual labor die within a year after retirement from something directly related to the central nervous system. This is related to the way people are literally programmed over time. This statistic is real, and so large of a percentage that some of you have probably heard of it happening to quite a few relatives. If not no worries..just keep working(hahaha.)

[Voltage Spike]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

Well it looks like the answer is in, but I'm still going to add my two cents.

When we decide to hire someone, it is based mostly on confidence, enthusiasm, knowledge of our company, and technical skills. The attire never comes into play.

While I can't say a suit has ever hurt anyone we've interviewed, we do tend to laugh at such people quite a bit. When you come in and completely outdress those doing the interviewing, you stand out and separate yourself from your potential coworkers. It makes it difficult to establish rapport, and it demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of the work environment.

Of course, you should probably know that most of my company is younger (less than fifty years old) and this advice is surely regional. From what I've seen, older people tend to hold others to different (I want to say outdated) standards. Also, while I've never interviewed with companies on, say, the East coast, my work experience there has led me to believe that I would be shunned for taking the liberty of dressing for the position in question.

[liberator]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

When we decide to hire someone, it is based mostly on confidence, enthusiasm, knowledge of our company, and technical skills. The attire never comes into play.

While I can't say a suit has ever hurt anyone we've interviewed, we do tend to laugh at such people quite a bit. When you come in and completely outdress those doing the interviewing, you stand out and separate yourself from your potential coworkers. It makes it difficult to establish rapport, and it demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of the work environment.

That's been my experience as well. But I find that my experience is way outside of what I hear in the mainstream, so your mileage may vary.

I'm 49 years old now. So far I have not experienced age discrimination that I can tell. I'm pretty much in the demographic of my peers in my current field, so I may be OK for a while. I do make an effort to discover the unstated but important local dress code (at this place it's long sleeve solid color shirts, no tie, slacks) and adhere to it. That said, I did not know this going into the interview in similar but not quite identical clothing, yet I got the job anyway.

I have gotten every job that I interviewed for, ever, no kidding, 100% success. For engineering jobs I generally wear a nice long sleeved shirt and khakis. On some occasions I will wear a tie. I have never worn a suit to an interview, except in 1983 when applying for a job with an intel agency (US government), at which it was expected. Getting past the filters and stooges to get the interview has been the hard part, and that's been purely by remote control (i.e. attire is not visible, thus not relevant).

I don't have a degree. I have 3 years towards my BSEE which I did in the late 1970s. I'm now working as a "principal engineer" at a huge cable TV company. That's one step below the top engineering spot in this engineering organization, roughly equivalent to a director on the management side. I believe that we have about 25 PEs out of 80,000 employees. We have 6 "fellow engineers", which is the next step up, and the top of the technical track at this place. It's the rough equivalent to VP on the management track.

My base salary is just a little over $100K, which is the magic number that is pretty hard to exceed here in the Denver area for engineering jobs in this field. They also toss in 10% bonus each year, so the total cash is close to $115K.

It's nice because they don't expect more than 40 hours / week. A couple of guys routinely put in a lot more, but it does not seem to have bought them anything much. I draw a very hard line at 40 hours, because if I don't they will consume every hour of my life, and it won't benefit me at all. I make this clear at the interview so there are no surprises later on. On several occasions I have been very glad to have done so, since I had to repeatedly remind the manager that I was promised at the interview that 40 hours was OK. This pissed them off but left my life intact.

You can do much better in terms of immediate salary as a contractor provided you have the connections to get the contract and can live with the downtime between contracts. About 10 years ago I was charging $90 / hr in the LA area, at 60 hrs / week. I made over $200K / yr for a couple of years, but that was very atypical for me. I have yet to see anything like this being available in Denver, but currently the local economy is booming (despite what CNN would have us believe), so it may be possible at the moment.

I would imagine that the lack of degree has slowed my advancement in the corporate world some. It would probably preclude my changing tracks to go into management. As I have no desire to be in management, that has not been an issue.

The very top spot for an engineer in this industry is CTO. But that's fundamentally an executive management position. It requires advanced degrees, political and managerial skills, and a lot of other things that I have no interest in obtaining. It also pays millions of dollars. Oh well.

My field is now data security, mostly in the embedded systems world. Prior to about 5 years ago it was embedded systems generally. Prior to 1985 it was a mix of other things that are not directly relevant to this kind engineering or IT, so interviewing techniques for those things probably won't be applicable here.

For many years I owned my own engineering company. It was small, with just a few permanent employees. We used contract help as needed. I think that the most I ever had was 8 engineers at one time. None of them ever wore even a tie to the interview, which was just fine by me.

My hiring criteria was strictly reputation from somebody I respected, and did they have the right skillset for that task. I was not looking to place people for the long haul.

In my field, the half life of a job is about 18 months. The longest I have ever held a job in this field is 4 years. That seems typical. Therefore I don't have any expectations of needing to impress people at the top so that I will one day rise up. Nowadays I always hire in at the top, or one step below, like where I am now. Raises are typically at or slightly below inflation company wide. This forces everybody to change jobs to other companies in order to advance. It's absurd, but it's how this world works.

I hope that this is helpful to you in some way.

[astcell]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

No offense, but telling someone to just wear a suit is a pretty dumbed up response.

I have had days when the folks I interviewed drove me up the wall. Out of ten applicants called back, five showed. The first guy slouched in the chair and put his feet on the front of the desk edge. Typical video gamer, but that was not the position. #2 did not have the word "bathe" in his vocabulary. I thought to myself, "Okay I am hiring the first person who has a small modicum of respect." The rest were no better. I had a new list made, and that took a while.

If one person wore a suit, showered, looked sharp, shook my hand firmly and even looked me right in the eye when he said, "I don't know how to do that (2nd part of that answer is 'but I will find out.)" I would have hired on the spot.

If you can spell (1337 does not count), have a resume on halfway decent paper, show up on time, with a suit, be clean, and do not expect me to by you lunch, you are already in the top 25%. Why not do that?

[Chris]

Re: got an interview tomorrow (weird question)

A huge percentage of older people who retire from a life of manual labor die within a year after retirement from something directly related to the central nervous system. This is related to the way people are literally programmed over time. This statistic is real, and so large of a percentage that some of you have probably heard of it happening to quite a few relatives. If not no worries..just keep working(hahaha.)

If this statistic is real, how about some references. What exactly is a 'huge percentage' anyway?