We impressed upon s25 the importance of appearance when he attended job fairs and interviews. The company where he works is very casual. His boss often comes to work in jeans and a t-shirt. For the interview s wore khakis and a long-sleeve button down. He even got a haircut right before. Now that he’s been hired he still dresses just a little bit more formally that his boss. Dark jeans, not too tight, leather laced “dress-shoes” with a sneaker sole, and a short-sleeve button down or polo. The only thing I’ve had to still remind him about is getting regular haircuts.
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depends on who the recruiters are. the median age of your SWE interviewer is likely <25 in most big tech/start ups. some of them (at high growth AI firms/YC start-ups) might implicitly be biased about anyone who might come across “uptight”. so the suit may hurt but who knows.
now if the same candidate is interviewing at an east coast bank or hedge fund, the dynamics are different.
S22 dresses up in a suit for every interview no matter what although he tells me most of his peers wear a nice looking fleece jacket/button down shirt with no jacket etc.
In general, anything that’s >= business casual in level of formality should be ok.
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Just to clarify, my “SWE” reference was for the Society of Women Engineers, not software engineers.
My D’s company brings a recent grad of their ELDP, a student currently in their co-op cohort, and one of the corporate leaders of the program so they can make offers on the spot. The recruiting team all wear khakis, collared shirts with the company logo, and dress shoes. They don’t really care too much about attire during the career fair itself but if a student gets an interview, which they do either later that day or the next, there is an expectation that the student will be dressed at least in business casual.
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Dressing for a management consulting job may give the wrong impression for some sort of creative visual arts job or a job that involves being on site at construction, mining, agricultural, manufacturing, etc. sites.
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Of course, the definition of “business casual” can be rather varied from one place to another.
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I can’t think of any information source better than The Economist for any job that requires understanding business, the economy, or the world. And it should be freely available from the school library.
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I agree but my son didn’t and he got the job.
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I was going to say something like this. Because yes, my younger kid’s major is construction management, which means he’ll be wearing not dressy clothes everyday and probably some version of nice jeans and a polo shirt most days. BUT! His school is generally “dressy”. The percentage of kids who are wearing golf shorts and polo shirts on regular days is much higher than it is at my older child’s school. So for the kid’s school, if he weren’t wearing something on the nicer side, I think he’d stand out as someone who didn’t care as much.
D said this morning one young woman came for her interview in a crop top. 
That said, they had a productive trip and ended up making a total of 5 offers.
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You remind me of a very awkward summer where senior management wanted to define “what is business appropriate attire” and I had to sit through a meeting where various, ordinarily smart people, struggled with the fact that a crop top is not the same as a tube top.
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Or just go to JP Morgan’s Guide to the Markets on their website.
Financial professionals use this quite often.
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To follow up on my two kids who both happened to have job fairs today (but at very different colleges.) (FWIW, both wore blazers and ties with khakis.)
S25, the Construction Management major at Clemson, was seriously targeting two companies at the job fair for a summer internship. One of them invited him back tomorrow for a longer in person interview with their team. The other had a good conversation and took his resume, so who knows, that might become an option too. The one that invited him back was his top choice for a wide variety of reasons, so lets cross some fingers that tomorrow’s convo goes well.
S22 didn’t have as good luck. He had identified four companies that he was interested in. The one he was most interested in didn’t show up (this happened to him last year too). He’d disappointed, but has LinkedIn information for the recruiter who was supposed to come, so he’s going to reach out to him tomorrow to express interest. Two of the companies that came had interesting sounding work, but only for their Texas locations. This is a permanent job for S22, and he’s still hoping to find something somewhere on the East Coast. So he had good conversations with both companies, but what they are offering doesn’t appeal. He’s going to follow up with the recruiter from one company that has many East Coast sites to reiterate his interest for anything on the East Coast. The fourth company was a bust - they don’t do the type of work he’s interested in at all. So that was kind of a disappointing day for him. But the upside of this is that he spent a lot of time working on and refining his resume prior to the career fair, and practicing his pitch and thinking about what questions he’d want to ask if he were invited to an interview. So that was good prep work for him for whatever comes next.
Meanwhile, back to S25, as mentioned above he wore dress shirt, tie, blazer. And it was really hot in the career fair space and he sweated like a beast. Can’t wear the shirt again until it’s cleaned. Unfortunately, it’s also his ONLY dress shirt that fits these days. So he’ll be wearing a polo shirt tomorrow to his call back interview. He said that at the career fair about 30% of guys were in blazers and 70% in polos, so it’s not like it’s going to be totally weird, but it would’ve been better, probably, to dress nicer for day two and the individual conversation. Oh well. Fingers crossed for him for tomorrow.
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He can’t air it out ??
I wish these kids would talk to more than only the companies that interest them up front. You just never know.
I’ll stay hopeful for them.
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I suggested he just hang the shirt and see how it seems today, but he wasn’t feeling it. That’s my construction management kid, so I think it’s a lot less formal generally. I told him he could do a polo shirt under the blazer (the internet tells me this is an acceptable look, as we do not trust my fashion sense) so we’ll see.
S22 did a lot of research on the companies that would be at the job fair prior to going. A fair number of them weren’t looking for MechE’s, so that knocked a bunch out ahead of time and given the crowds and lines to speak to people, the reality is that there isn’t really time to talk to more than a few folks. So he targeted his spots and spoke with the four most likely. It seemed like a pretty solid approach.
S25 talked with more than the two he is seriously interested in, but mostly to gain information for future years. Since he’s only a freshman, he really wants to be able to live at home next summer - he’s not ready to have to be on his own and making his own meals. So he focused on the two firms that have a large presence in our area (he goes to school 9+ hours away and many of the construction management recruiters there were regional). If those two don’t go anywhere in the next few weeks, then he’ll need to start looking more broadly, but it’s still pretty early going for next summer plans.
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My S20 who was majoring in finance could not get an internship at all after junior year. Many applications. Very good GPA at a school most people have heard of. Not even one interview! After adding accounting as a second major, he applied for an internship with a CPA firm and they said “how about a permanent job?” The accounting major took an additional semester but - he starts in January. They remain in contact sending gift baskets, etc. to him occasionally, so I think the job will hold…
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Just an fyi- a company which brings on a lot of summer interns often make the “adulting” piece pretty easy. Lots of the interns split rentals (within walking distance of work a plus, but also company vans for transportation), company provides breakfast and lunch, you can order in dinner if you work past a certain hour, etc. A neighbors kid (super sweet, seems devoid of any life skills but very book smart) happily reported on an entire summer where his “contribution” to the shared apartment was a cereal assortment he got delivered, to the delight of his roommates. Parents were worried he’d starve but the company cafeteria provided two meals a day (heavily subsidized), a few dinners ordered in a week, one roommate knew how to make chili.
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thanks for the clarification,
because I was soaking in every word since my son is SWE (software).
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Not at all helpful at this moment, but may help in the future. J. Crew sells no-iron dress shirts that come out of the dryer looking as if they have been ironed.
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Can you please share the exact shirt style/link?
This one? JCrew Wrinkle-free?
Because this Uniqlo no-iron gets kinda wrinkled.
We had gotten this &collar shirt back in 2022 (they have newer models) that also got kinda wrinkled. I got this one because it’s supposed to be wrinkle-resistant, but also 3D Stretchy, Stain Repellent, Uber Comfortable, Moisture Wicking.
Still haven’t found a perfect white button up shirt for under $150.
I can recommend a FANTASTIC wrinkle-free, cool-breathing, stain-resistant, WASHABLE suit that goes on great deal on the holidays (Black Friday, etc).
Bluffworks we got Gramercy style
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Thank you! May not have solved the problem for the moment, but I need to buy both my kids more shirts, so something to look in to!
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