We Only Hire the Trendiest (2016)
This was a great read and I&#x27;ve seen this kind of thing first-hand at a few companies I&#x27;ve worked&#x2F;interviewed at.<p>&gt; Wear a suit and tie to an interview<p>That&#x27;s a personal test of mine.  I have <i>never</i> showed up to an interview without a tie.  My dad was a small business owner in a manufacturing sector -- he was the hiring manager -- everything I learned about job interviewing I learned from him and the first thing on his list -- being a previous generation in an industry outside of software development -- was &quot;you wear a tie&quot;.  There were various reasons given for this.  Maybe its the area that I live in, but I&#x27;ve never had difficulty explaining away the tie whereas I know of a few folks in the area who, despite the environment being stricly &quot;dress-down&quot;, still expect interviewee&#x27;s to wear a tie[0].<p>It&#x27;s easy to write off with a little transparency and careful humor: &quot;Sorry for being over-dressed.  My dad was a business owner and somewhat beat into my head that dressing up for an interview communicates that you want the job.  Plus, I love Jerry Garcia ties and have far too many of them for how few opportunities there actually are to wear a suit.&quot;  Nobody wants to be judged negatively about their appearance, but we tend to make sweeping judgements on that single variable alone -- by adding a little additional information, you eliminate the rabbit-hole of &quot;is this guy going to be a rigid pain-in-the-ass about everything because he insists on over-dressing for an interview?&quot; with &quot;he&#x27;s actively trying to make a good impression&quot;<p>Another thing that tends to get lost in the whole &quot;are they a good culture fit&quot; is &quot;is your culture all that great in the first place?&quot;  When interviewing people, shortly after determining that a candidate might actually be able to do the job, we tend to fall right into &quot;Will I actually want to work with this person day-to-day&quot;.  Someone who doesn&#x27;t fit perfectly into that mold will cause anxiety.  But what if the thing that &quot;didn&#x27;t fit with my teams&#x27; culture&quot; is something that your team would benefit from?  At a recent job, I was told that the ultimate decision for every employee being hired fell to the founders of the company in consultation with the people who interviewed the developer[1].  The question we&#x27;re asked is &quot;How will this person make us better?&quot;  It sounds fluffy, but it changes how you think about a candidate -- it says &quot;I&#x27;m hiring not just to fill a need, but to bring this individual, along with their life experiences, into a team with the goal of all of us improving.&quot;<p>As far as the &quot;personal test of mine&quot; is concerned, I&#x27;m perfectly OK with being passed on for a job where my tie and explanation didn&#x27;t satisfy the interviewer that I was a good fit.  Chances are one of two things really happened (1) I wasn&#x27;t right for the job for a lot of other reasons, but that&#x27;s the one that was presented (if any were, at all) or (2) a place that would judge me negatively on something so unimportant is a company I&#x27;m going to have a difficult time understanding and succeeding in.<p>[0] This is <i>stupid</i> bit it happens.  It&#x27;s unlikely to disqualify someone, outright, but at these shops, a tie is a plus.<p>[1] And after a year of being there, I did a few solo interviews and can confirm that &quot;it&#x27;s true!&quot;