The Pink Shoe Diaries

i am a firm believer in first impressions. especially in the business world.

earlier today, a young woman came into my office for an interview. she was a pretty girl, but she was wearing a gray, collared sweatshirt and a pair of black jeans.

and this is for a management position in an office.

not a very good first impression.

even if you are broke: you can go to Goodwill or the Salvation Army and pick up a nice blouse and some pants or a skirt. i mean there has to be some alternative to collared sweatshirt hell. borrow something off a friend!

and i know the price that is paid for not making a good first impression.

when i was looking for a job last year, i found what i thought would be a GREAT position for me as an assistant buyer for Talbots. I had plenty of retail experience, and you know i am familiar with the merchandise. so when i got called in for a second interview to meet the big guns i thought it was All Systems Go.

the day arrived, and i set out my "you WILL be impressed" interview outfit: a perfectly tailored black suit with black+tan striped wrap-around shell underneath. very sophisticated. very flattering. very "you know you should hire me".

however i realized too late that there was a STAIN on the pants. how it got there, i don't know. i'm guessing the same gods that were responsible for me never getting benefits at the real estate agency(thus forcing me to find new work) were looking to screw me one final time.

and you know the jacket doesn't work without the pants.

so in the final 30 minutes before i had to leave for the interview, i had to find a whole new outfit. and half of what I owned was in the laundry pile.

I finally scrapped together an older, less appealing, always-wrinkled-no-matter-what black skirt suit and a MUSTARD colored blouse.

mustard.

that right there was my first mistake.

and i thought i could act like i meant to wear such an awful shirt by pinning a mustard colored rose on the suit jacket

am i kidding? no.

so, i am not feeling like i Look Good, and thus i could not Do What I Want (and you know how i feel about that!)

and to top it all off, it was humid. so i wont go into details of what my hair looked like.

so i arrived to the interview a bit early and sat down in the waiting room to await my judgement. a few minutes later, a young woman left the office i was waiting to enter.

she was perfect.

long, shiny straight hair. perfect aubergine fitted suit and what appeared to be black Jimmy Choo heels. black Birkin bag.

BIRKIN.

yeah.

going into the interview after THAT is no way to make a good first impression. at least not for me, in my nasty mustard shirt and my ill fitting suit and my faux mustard rose. but i collected myself and headed in.

of course, i did not get the job. they said it was because i "had no experience in the field"

yeah right. i know it was because i wore mustard. and a bad suit.

i really feel that if i had dressed more "to impress", i would have been more confident, and better able to bullshit past the fact that i had no merchandising experience. what is "experience" compared to a Birkin bag? not much!

anyway, my point is this. i doubt very much that the woman who interviewed today got the job because we unfortunately live in a world where appearances matter. you don't have to be the most attractive person on earth, but you should know how to clean yourself up. and how to dress to impress.

note to self : mustard = not impressive.