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job interview question

Y

yoda291

Diamond Member
Hey folks,

wanted to get some opinions here. I am helping a friend of mine who is slowly growing her business to the point where she feels it would be worthwhile to actually have a fulltime IT dept of 2 sysadmins. I am helping her screen candidates on their technical backgrounds since she has no relevant expertise therein.

The thing of it is, her company is small and extremely casual (shorts and t-shirts on really hot days) while these candidates are coming in dressed to the nines and are clearly unconfortable. I've been thinking about recommending they dress casually or no jackets before coming in but I'm wondering if this would throw them off-balance. Many of them are fresh out of school and already jumpy as jackhammers. I wouldn't want to make them even more nervous.

Thoughts?
 
At my job, people who get interviewed are usually dressed business casual/professional, and maybe after the first work week or so, if they get hired, they start dressing casually. Although it took me a month to start wearing jeans/t-shirts.
 
Meet the interviewees yourself first, and then if they're decent at all, call them back and tell them to just dress casually so they can meet some others. I think that in the first meeting, people will be hesitant to not dress up and be different than normal, but having her meet them in a second meeting might make it easier.
 
This has been discussed a lot on ATOT, and most people just don't understand the culture of IT. I can understand they were uncomfortable, because "dress to the nines" is not at all commonplace for IT.

I would make the recommendation to dress business casually (I'm not sure I'd go out and say full casual; you'll probably get all sorts of wild appearances).

Just read that you said they're fresh out of school. They probably have the mistaken impression that if they don't throw on the suit then there's no chance, because that's what they've been coached to do for so long. I would still just tell them to dress business casually though. You're likely to get a lot better responses out of these people if they're not so uptight trying to follow social norms that make them feel out of place.

imo
 
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