Written by: Danishy Kuganesan
Introduction
Have you ever felt like you have nothing to wear for an interview? You should consider adding any adaptable fashion pieces to your wardrobe. Besides comfort and functionality, many adaptable fashion pieces are perfect to wear during a job interview. It’s all about how you style these pieces. You can choose to match pieces according to your own fashion style and apply the rules and standards that the place you’re interviewing for would approve of wearing.
What is Appropriate Dressing for Success?
The phrase “appropriate dressing for success” originally meant wearing pieces that are standard for working in a corporate job. This can be by wearing clothes that are neutral in colour and style, clothing that doesn't have any patterns, clothes that show prominence in clean lines, and polished accessories. But can now be adapted to include aspects such as personal style, comfortability, and accessibility into the mix. Dressing for success isn’t just limited to fancy suits or fancy dresses. Many adaptable clothing pieces fit the vision of success that you can use to elevate your interview-ready wardrobe.
Men’s Long Sleeve Shirt with Magnetic Buttons
5 rules for dressing to a job interview
In the workplace, there are rules and regulations for what you can and can’t wear to a job interview. Depending on the job you’re interviewing for, it can range from business attire to business casual attire, and casual attire. Here are our 5 rules that will help you dress for success at your job interview.
1—Research the company
The first and most important rule of preparing an interview-ready outfit is to look for any details that the company has sent to you about what kinds of outfits are the most appropriate for your job interview. If the company didn’t list what kinds of outfits are the most appropriate for their job interviews on their website or in an interview-related email, then you can ask them either through email or by phone call about what the standards and rules are for what clothes to wear for your job interview. That way you have a good sense of what they are looking for in your interview-ready outfit and can start choosing what clothes you want to add or take away.
2—Prepare your interview-ready outfits ahead of interview day
Have you ever experienced that rush of going to a job interview and realized that you haven’t made an interview-ready outfit until the very last minute? Then you know how stressful it is to find clothes in a hurry. To ensure that situations like these don’t happen on the job interview day, you should prepare your job interview outfits in advance of job interview day. That way you’ll have a good idea of what you’re going to wear and can feel relieved to look and feel at your best at your job interview.
3 - Prepare multiple job-ready outfit combinations
Having 1-3 already existing interview outfit combinations does help you take the guesswork out of the stress of finding job-ready outfits. You can mix and match different portions of your outfit to utilize all of the clothes you have in your closet. You can repeat these outfit choices for the next time you get an offer for a job interview. You can also use these outfits as templates to help you find your sense of style
4—Get your clothes cleaned
Make sure that your interview-ready outfit is the cleanest it can be. After all, you wouldn’t want your outfit to look messy or have any stains to potentially make you nervous for the interview at hand. Make sure that the clothing pieces you chose for your interview-ready outfits are washed, steamed, ironed, and stain-free for the interview. If you have anyone who can help you with freshening up your clothes, you can invite them to help clean your clothes to prepare for your job interview ahead of time.
5 - Maximizing comfort
As well as looking good, you also need to feel good at your job interview. This is especially true for people with disabilities, as having comfortable clothes is useful for being in a job interview. You can maximize comfort in your interview-ready outfits by choosing pieces that use soft fabrics that don’t make you feel itchy (such as JuneAdaptive’s Women’s Reversible Front Vest with Magnetic Closure and added soft plush interior fabric), ones that don’t use too many strings/buttons, and clothes that you can just slip on your body.
Women’s Reversible Front Vest with Magnetic Closure
Best Adaptive clothing pieces for first impressions
Here are JuneAdaptive’s choices for the best adaptive clothing pieces that’ll make everyone think you are a professional and are worth paying attention to.
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Basic pieces— A basic piece is any clothing that’s simple in both colour and cut structure. Basic pieces can be used to mix and match with other clothing pieces. Basic clothing pieces are a great essential to help you get started on finding clothes. You can use these basic pieces in multiple outfits, which is useful for conducting multiple job interviews. Some examples of basic pieces include undershirts (such as JuneAdaptive’s white sleeveless undershirts), t-shirts, long sleeves (such as JuneAdaptive’s long-sleeve shirts for men), a solid-colour pair of pants, and a solid-colour pair of sneakers
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Cardigans— cardigans are a great way to dress professionally while also providing comfort and flexibility. You can also pair a cardigan with a basic piece for an elevated fit that will let others know that you mean business. JuneAdaptive’s fleece cardigans come with multiple snap closures that can be undone safely and quickly to ensure that you have a perfect fit for any job interview. A cardigan that JuneAdaptive loves is the fleece cardigan with easy-to-use snap closures located in the shoulder area
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Pants/skirts— Wearing a professional yet comfortable skirt or pair of pants is a must to be job-ready. It’s strongly suggested that for pants, you should consider wearing dress pants or jeans. Whereas for the skirt, you should consider wearing a pencil skirt or a knee-length dress. A pant or skirt option that JuneAdaptive recommends is the Women’s pull-on skirt with pull-up loops and our side-zip pants with easy side-zip and velcro tab closures
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Socks and Shoes— Socks and shoes can help tie an outfit together if it has a clean look and feel. You can match your socks and shoes with the colours of the rest of your interview-ready outfit to impress the job interviewers during your job interview. A pair of socks and a pair of shoes that JuneAdaptive has to offer for your job-ready outfit are our comfort crew anti-slip socks and lightweight peach shoes with rear zipper closures.
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Jewellery/other accessories— an interview-ready outfit isn’t complete without other accessories. These accessories can be a watch, a bracelet, some rings, a pair of earrings, a headband, a hair tie, a hair clip, and/or a handbag to store your belongings. You can choose to mix and match these accessories with each other and can bring an interview-ready outfit to life.
Women's Fleece Cardigan with Back Overlap
Tips to feel Confident and Comfortable during interviews
Going to an interview can be extremely daunting to people with disabilities. Especially because it can increase levels of anxiety and can be a new change to a daily routine. Here are some tips that will help you feel confident and comfortable during an interview
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Practice makes progress— prepare for the interview in advance by making a set of questions that are commonly asked by interviewers. If you are in a time crunch and aren’t able to come up with any interview questions, or if there aren’t any interview questions that they wish for you to answer in advance of the interview taking place. You can go visit the public library or your post-secondary school’s career services website to find a set of common interview practice questions to help you prepare for your interview.
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Body language and eye contact—Having strong eye contact and body language (like posture, gestures, and other non-verbal cues) when answering job interview questions lets the interviewer know that you are open and comfortable talking to them. It can be difficult to practice both, as there is no way to control your body language and eye contact when the interview begins, but being aware of how your body and eyes function in a job interview can help calm your nerves when the interview takes place.
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Highlight your accomplishments and your passions— Confidently state any accomplishments that you have contributed to on any project. Highlighting your achievements lets the interviewer grasp what skills you’ve learned and would like to carry over into this new job role. Also making sure that you voice out your dedication to learning more about the workplace helps you connect further with the employers at your job interview.
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Breathe in, breathe out— it has been proven that practicing proper breathing techniques, it helps you relax and feel more confident. Take the time to slow down and ask for a breather during a job interview if you feel your nerves are too much. You can also ask the interviewer for the time to step back for a couple of minutes and come back whenever you feel ready to get back into answering any job interview questions from the employer
Take Away
We have taken a look at how you can use adaptable fashion pieces to help you prepare for success at your next job interview. First, we looked closer at what it means to be dressed for success. Next, we looked closer at the 5 rules for dressing up for a job interview; later, we examined some adaptable clothing pieces that make good first impressions. Lastly, we looked at some tips to ensure that your interview goes smoothly.
To read another article about adaptive fashion, read through our blog post called “Adaptive Clothing for Professional Settings: Look Good, Feel Good.” To read more articles like this about how adaptable fashion is making waves in the fashion market as well as updates on where to find funding, benefits, and grants for yourself and other people with disabilities, please sign up for the June Adaptive Newsletter link at the bottom of this blog post.
You can also click on the “Our Community Blog” tab to read similar articles about how JuneAdaptive and adaptive fashion is making waves in the fashion world to be inclusive of people with disabilities.
