Guess what I saw on the desk of a State Employment Development Department (EDD) Veterans’ Representative here at the Workforce Development Center in Indio? Not that I should have been that surprised at the subject, but it was a published guide for the transitioning soldier to civilian job hunting attire. There is no doubt that clothes do communicate a message in most venues, including in an employment interview. I believe a subliminal part of clothing’s message may be how you feel about yourself, and possibly by inference, the importance you place on the occasion. Intuitively, this knowledge must have come to me at an early age, as the following true story relates:
I was cleaning and rearranging my closet one Sunday afternoon (yes, the Brand Evangelist shirt is still in there) at a time when my son was hanging around and casually chatting with me. Without a specific theme to the conversation it started to wind down. To extend that moment of father – son bonding, I reached to an upper shelf where I keep my school year books and pulled down the one from my freshman year at college. Flipping to the correct section I handed him the book and pointed out my photo at age eighteen. I though he would get a kick out of seeing me as teenager, but what he really marveled at was the fact that out of pages and pages of freshmen, I was one of the very few who had on a necktie and among the even fewer that had on a suit coat. He remarked (a little too teasingly), “You must have known how to dress even back then.”
Challenging him as I walked over to my roll top desk in the corner of the room, I said, “Well you think that something, try and pick me out of this photo.” I reached from one of the cubby holes (where I knew it was stashed) my third grade class photo, and held it up for him to see. He went back and forth across the faces row by row repeating the task several times like he was watching a tennis match, but he couldn’t seem to find me. Since I had a completely different hair color (even in black and white) I said, “I will give you a hint, look at the clothes.”
I helped him make the initial distinction that I was not one of students wearing a dress, duh? Of the 12 or so kids left (after excluding the girls) we noticed that some of the boys had on stripped tee shirts popular at the time, short sleeved casual button up shirts with collars that were ironed open, and even a couple wore their Cub Scout uniforms, but only one little blond haired boy had on a sport coat and bow tie. With that recognition my son grinning from ear to ear yelled out, “Mom, mom, come here you gotta see this!”
Even though I don’t have a surviving photo that far back for documentation, I do vividly remember going downtown with my mother in the very beginning of my academic career to purchase a dress shirt, one which had a clip-on bow tie already in the package. I was to wear a white shirt and tie for my Kindergarten health/nutrition play, as were all the other little boys in my class. As I recall, I was in a featured, but non-speaking role as a pumpkin.
Looking back I guess it was there that my sense of wardrobe began. For important public performances, and occasions that will be remembered, you can’t go wrong if you have on a white dress shirt (blouse), a coat and tie won’t hurt either. Also, good advise to any job hunter.