Interviewing Tip-Toes

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We saw an overall attitude approach to interviewing in one of my last posts. Some of you agreed and disagreed on this approach…

But, let’s push that aside for now. This post is about the big guns.

White socks.

Apparently they don’t go with dress shoes no matter what you are wearing.

I heard this from a career counselor.

I don’t mean to be a nay-sayer. I am sure this councelor is very good at landing people jobs. BUT- somehow- I got my new job wearing white socks. At the time, I didn’t know any better. Call me lucky. Call me so good it didn’t matter, not even in the follow up interview. I wore them. I didn’t even have any neutral colored socks that weren’t boot socks at the time. I even wore them my first couple weeks of work.

Honestly, I doubt anyone noticed. This may be because I was interviewed by people more interested in skills or attitude. This could be because I was interviewed by men or just people who are too deep to judge a person based on socks. It could be that these people just didn’t look at my feet. They might be secret white sock supporters even.

Sock racism.

Call me crazy, but maybe it is just okay to wear white socks with dress shoes. Maybe it’s not awesome, but I don’t think it looks that bad. I’d hire someone wearing white socks (even after Labor Day).

Fashion police, arrest me. I thought white socks were pretty safe, or at least safer than the ones with the little flying moo-cows on them. Those ones are okay only *after* they hire you.

  • White socks!?!

    Shocking!

    I’d go for bright red or stripey or something at least.

    Although, does anyone really care what colour socks you wear? Seriously? If there’s one thing I’ve learned about people, it’s that generally they don’t give a toss about what you’re doing or wearing.

    That being said, I’d never hire someone wearing sandals and socks, that’s just one faux pas too far.

  • This is implying you would hire someone wearing sandals… Most work places I’ve seen in won’t let you wear open toed shoes. I don’t know why (at the office that is, in a warehouse it makes sense).

  • The Cowboy

    I’d be a little wary of hiring anybody in the IT field that didn’t have at least one fashion faux pas. The smartly dressed ones tend to be fakers.

  • Sandals are fine, provided it’s warm outside. If it’s a cold day and someone’s wearing sandals then I’d worry about them.
    My previous job was an office with a factory attached, but even then you could wear what you liked in the office. I knew at least one person who bought their slippers in to the office. (He was narcoleptic though, and would sleep under his desk during the day sometimes.)

  • “The smartly dressed ones tend to be fakers.”

    I concur. Not just for dress, but for overall evaluation. If I were hiring, and there was no hint of geek about the person, I would be suspicious. I would need to issue a test. Even if it were just one of those questionnaire forwards people used to send around.

    But it’s tricky… how do we know it’s not a geek successfully fitting into the sleek cookie cutter just for the interview?

    Hm…

    “Sandals are fine, provided it’s warm outside. If it’s a cold day and someone’s wearing sandals then I’d worry about them.”

    Then worry about the entire city of Portland, Maine. Seriously, everyone there wears sandals in the winter. I refused, and *I* was the weirdo.

    I had a roommate who gave herself frostbite on the bottoms of her feet that way… they turned BLACK!

  • SteveJ

    “But it’s tricky… how do we know it’s not a geek successfully fitting into the sleek cookie cutter just for the interview?”

    I agree, some sort of test. For instance we hired a guy solely because he built his own electric meter monitor out of a laser, sensor, and serial port. If you’re hiring a hardware guy and he doesn’t geek out around his house, he’s probably not going to do it at work either. I’d think similarly with a dev, you need to get into some sort of language or tool conversation, just to see if they can overgeek a situation. This presumes you’re looking for geeks and not corporate drones, hiring practices obviously differ. Also good are: Last book you read, techie item you bought.

    My “best” test is to take an item off their resume and then say something blatantly ridiculous about it. If they won’t engage/argue with you (hopefully politely), then they’re either not very geeky, or faking. For instance with a web designer, find out their preferred browser and then ask them to compare it to Netscape 4.7. This example obviously dates the last time I worked with HTML, but you get the gist. Of course you need to phrase it in such a way that they won’t be afraid to argue with you, or they won’t be scared off: I did interview at one place where the lead was staunchly pro-vi and spent 10 minutes talking about how wasteful anyone who used emacs or (god forbid) some IDE might be.

  • Kathryn

    “I’d be a little wary of hiring anybody in the IT field that didn’t have at least one fashion faux pas. The smartly dressed ones tend to be fakers.”

    I must respectfully disagree. Just as it is lame not to hire a perfectly qualified job candidate based on their (purportedly incorrect) choice of hosiery, it is just as lame to label a well-dressed, well-groomed candidates as probable “fakers.” Even taking it out of the specific IT professional context, one can still be a “geek” and still maintain a very professional image.

    Look, I’m a total geek. I have enjoyed playing D&D and video games (though I don’t have much time for that these days now that I’m in grad school), I love Anime (again, school has sort of put a damper on that), and I can write some code (not much, and not very sophisticated, but I can). However, I’m pretty certain that few people would ever look at me and think “gee, she’s a geek” based on my appearance. Yes, I take pride in my appearance, and personally believe that looking my best is one of the ways that I express my confidence in myself and my abilities. That’s certainly not to say that other, less image-conscious geeks are not confident in themselves. Far from it. And that’s not to say that I would ever outright discriminate against someone based on their appearance. Hey as long as the person is qualified and had the basics of personal hygiene down, I say bring them on! But for me, personally, it gives me pleasure to look nice, and it psychologically helps me project an image of confidence.

    At the same time — and I’m probably going to offend some people here, but oh well — the White Sock Offender is probably not the person you want to send out to liaise face-to-face with clients. Sorry. Successful businesses do — and legitimately should — have an “image” to maintain. The degree of professionalism (or lack thereof) displayed by the physical appearance of an employee reflects on the business itself. That’s CERTAINLY not to devalue the level of importance of the work that the White Sock Offender does. In fact, if the White Sock Offender is smart, s/he will probably take over the business someday anyway — at which point s/he will want to hire an image consultant. But a business needs to sell its product (whatever that may be), and other businesses (or individuals) want to buy only from someone who projects an image that they themselves want to emulate. For the most part, that’s just how it is.

  • “White Sock Offender is probably not the person you want to send out to liaise face-to-face with clients.”

    I think that ability to speak and project confidence trumps fashion sense. I recently found out about this white sock thing, and I’ve done a good amount of work face to face- I have about as much customer service related experience stuff on my resume as I do tech (maybe even more).

    I also think that nine times out of ten, people either aren’t looking at you feet, or they don’t see it since your slacks meet your shoes below (or mostly below) the sock line.

    I also think if the right people saw me in the white socks and it was that big a deal, someone would have said something. I seriously did not know about white socks.

    Why do they even make white socks, then?

    Also at the risk of offense Kat- you’re a smart woman, and- sure- you fully qualify as a geek, but I’m also pretty sure I’d never see you apply for a tech job.

    On the tech team of my last job I was not the one with the fashion faux pas and it was an ad agency too- so yeah, clients would come in. None of us were terribly dressed (in my opinion), but I did see jeans with collared shirts combined.

    I think you’re over estimating the power of the white sock.

    I love that white socks are causing such passionate discourse. :)

    “…it is just as lame to label a well-dressed, well-groomed candidates as probable “fakers.””

    To be fair, I’m sure there are superbly dressed tech whizzes out there. As a matter of fact, one guy I worked with until recently was always *super* snazzy, cutely, fancily dressed and knew his shit super well. My IT instructor also is extremely well dressed (and knowledgeable, he used to do system administration on a base). He is also man enough to wear the pink suit and tie combo. I’ve also heard that color is a no-no (same place I heard about the sock thing), but I have to admire any strait man that can wear a variety of color well.

    I just think that people shouldn’t confuse lack of fashion knowledge with lack of qualifications for a tech related position- if anything, geeks tend to not have a natural business fashion sense or knowledge.

    We all have *a* fashion sense, if not the right kind. I get mighty sad when I can’t wear my Oregon Trail sweat shirt… :)

    Since I now have the attention of a fashionable young woman, I also was socked (wow, that was such a great slip, I had to leave it in there) to learn that one should not wear a leather jacket to an interview. I don’t understand the white sock thing, but with the Labor Day thing, I just chalk it off as problems with white. What’s wrong with leather coats? I mean, I usually wear my red coat anyways, so I’m in the clear, I’m just curious if there’s a reason.

    I’m so lucky to have such knowledgeable readers… first I learn about British cuisine, now this. :)

  • The Cowboy

    @Kathryn
    ” Just as it is lame not to hire a perfectly qualified job candidate based on their (purportedly incorrect) choice of hosiery, it is just as lame to label a well-dressed, well-groomed candidates as probable “fakers.” ”

    I should clarify here. I didn’t mean that you should hire or dismiss somebody based on how they dress. I too have known good developers that had strong fashion sense, and complete posers with bad toupees. Nothing like that is absolute, you have to make a judgment call based on the content of the interview, of course. However, that being said, in my experience the vast majority of true hard-core geeks seem to lack fashion sense. It’s just not the kind of thing that tends to interest them (myself included). Why spend your time learning about what’s in fashion when you can be rolling your own CMS system?

    If somebody came into an interview wearing one white sock and one purple sock, but demoed the DotNetNuke wiki module they wrote last week, I’d probably hire them on the spot (if it was good code, that is). When the guy with the $600 suit and immaculate hair comes in, but tells me polymorphism is a “buzz word”, I’m probably not going to call him back. There’s a lot of people out there that have learned just enough buzz words to sound good in an interview, but couldn’t code their way out of the FizzBuzz test. The way they dress can be a clue, but it’s not the final deciding factor.

  • The Cowboy

    @Celes
    ” but I did see jeans with collared shirts combined.”
    I wear that every Friday, what’s wrong with that?

  • “I wear that every Friday, what’s wrong with that?”

    Wearing it every day and thinking it’s dressing up. Also, sometimes the effect is more ‘farm-hand-ish’ than anything. Depends on the jeans and shirt I guess.

    Otherwise, only about as much as is wrong with white socks in my opinion.

    I am *so* going to by the #1 search result for white socks when this is over.

  • Update: I just read an article about the current fashion no-no of white socks.

    “Having white socks on your feet when you are not in the gym is pretty much like blasting an upper-cut to the eyes of the beautiful women…”

    There’s a good laugh.

    Interesting- out of 7 people who have left comments on the article, 2 concur on the gravity of white socks, 3 don’t think it matters, and 2 admit that they prefer white socks and think they look good with business attire

    This is a much more heated and complicated issue than we know.

  • SteveJ

    Gotta keep working here…I just googled

    “white sock fashion police” #30
    “white sock racism” #5
    “white sock racism fashion police” #2
    “white sock faux pas fashion police seize” #2
    “white sock fashion police seize” #1

    I was sure sock racism would be a standout…

  • Google:
    “white sock seize” #2
    “white sock faux pas” #40

    Google is a hard mistress to please and apparently white socks are a much more popular discussion topic than I ever could have imagined. Truth = stranger than fiction.

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