“Should It Matter?“: Recruiter Raises A Concern After A Candidate Didn’t Make It Through In Part Because Of What They Were Wearing

"Dress for success" is a widely popular message that encourages employees to take care of their attire. Now, without a doubt, clothes make a strong visual statement and might even get you an extra client or two – however, is it still crucial to dress in business wear for interviews?

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, instead of the usual face-to-face procedure, employment has turned to virtual team meetings, video conferences and Zoom interviews.

Those who get the pleasure of working from home don't wake up a couple of hours prior to their shift just to compose themselves and, perhaps, choose a more fitting outfit. I mean, let's face it, most of us don't even have our pants on.

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"What to wear?!" – a LinkedIn user and recruitment specialist took it to the platform to share a concern regarding virtual interviews and dress code.

The woman wondered whether recruiters are responsible for reminding job-seeking folk to dress appropriately after she revealed how one of her candidates didn't move forward because external clients didn't appreciate them wearing a hoodie.

Bored Panda has managed to reach out to the author; Louise started working as a recruitment consultant at the age of 24 when she set up her first recruitment agency. For 18 years, the woman worked in what they call the "rec to rec" sector, which is focused on placing recruitment consultants with other recruitment agency clients.

The thing is, two of their candidates were put forward to interview with two external hiring clients. Louise said that neither candidate made it through the first stage – however, a comment was made in which the hiring managers said that one of the applicants was "unprofessional" in their demeanor, in part because they were wearing a hoodie.

Louise then added: "the post was a question to other recruiters. Our job as a recruiter is to help candidates prepare for interviews as much as we can. We point them in the right direction regarding websites to review potential questions to think about, but should we also be advising them to think about what they wear?

We also asked the author whether she thinks that appearance affects work performance, to which Louise said: "absolutely not. In fact, I don't even use video screening myself when I am registering candidates because it doesn't even feature into my criteria. However, if a hiring company has a dress code or if the role is client facing, surely the client can have expectations on what is considered professional attire. As recruiters, should we be asking this information and ensuring that we share with candidates or do we assume that candidates will seek out this information themselves?"

"It is widely accepted that in tech, people wear what they want. This is an assumption I too have held for the last 3 years. My point was, it's not about what I think, or the candidate thinks, but if you are applying for a role in a company where there is an expectation, is it not our job as a recruiter to make the candidate aware? I wear hoodies all day when I am working from home, but if I am jumping on a call with a client, I will change my top, yes. Why? It makes me feel that I have made an effort to get ready to be online, just as I would have done if I was driving to meet a client face to face."

Moreover, a great deal of LinkedIn users have, in fact, misunderstood the context of the post and thought that it was Louise who was against casual wear during online interviews. However, once it went viral, the woman edited it to debunk the criticism.

Daniel Space has worked in HR as a business partner for almost 20 years and he has worked for companies like Electronic Arts, WebMD and Spotify.

Bored Panda also managed to contact Daniel and he thought that Louise’s post was really representative of the fact that we have changed; that the way that we used to job search and the way that we view the job search – pre-imposed pandemic – are two very different things. Given how comfortable we are within the span of our home, the man thinks that it’s really important to consider why we’re considering professional dress to be crucial.

We asked Daniel the same question, "do you think appearance affects work performance?", to which he said: "I personally do not think dress impacts work performance but I do think that that’s something each person has to decide for themselves. I know that there are people that do prefer to get dressed up even if it’s working from home because it gives the illusion of productivity, and I know that there are others who are fine to not dress up formally and just to be more comfortable because they feel more productive then. My thought process is to 1. - know who you are 2. - be with a company that can accept that."

Lastly, we wondered whether there's something else that Daniel would like the readers to know and the content creator responded with: "my big thing that I want all the readers to know is that we’re still in an extraordinarily hot job market but we’re starting to see the signs of it cooling down so there’s still tons of opportunity; there’re a lot of great ways to find them but this is the time to also start thinking about stabilizing."

Whether you agree that dressing smart is essential for both face-to-face and virtual interviews or not, appropriate attire is always welcomed. Perhaps having exceptionally strict workwear, nowadays, is not as important in many companies – though it is still in your best interest to match your job's culture.

What do you think about it?