The age-old advice about always erring on the side of overdressing for the interview is unfortunately a little outdated. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to look nice, well put-together and confident. Jeans often cost more than dress pants, right? Tickets to the symphony are usually cheaper than tickets to the baseball game; yes, the world has gone more casual, jutting its thumb in the eye of stuffiness. You don’t see too many non-banking CEOs clad in Brooks Brothers. But the rub is that it’s become more complicated to do casual just right. That means it’s often more work to look proper business-casual than it is to dress up. Alas!

You don’t want to look like an alien life form beamed down to the office where you are interviewing, and that’s how it might appear if you overshoot the dress code by too much. So it’s best to do a little research. It’s not good form to ask about the dress code to an interviewer (pre-interview), so that means you need some intel on the vibe at the company. If you don’t know anyone there, check out all the social media outlets and try to find some pics of people at the office.

Just to be clear:

Use good judgment on your wardrobe. Shoot for looking maybe a little more dressed up than one at the level you’re looking to be hired might show up to work looking like.

About NextGen

NextGen is the brainchild of longtime telecom professionals with nearly 50 years of experience and millions of dollars in Telecom Recruiting Services. We focus on establishing long term relationships with our clients and candidates so we can recruit the best and the brightest in the telecom industry. This ‘quality over quantity’ approach is at the heart of everything we do and has resulted in successful job placements at Fortune 1000 firms worldwide.