Smoke and Mirrors

Earlier this week, I had an interview in downtown Chicago. (See, I told you that I’ve interviewed in places other than NYC!) At this point, I have interviewed a number of times with a variety of companies; that experience has been minimally helpful as I have received virtually no feedback on my interview performance. In fact, the only comment that I was able to coax out of a recruiter was that I seemed “young”. Could you be more specific? Do I look young? Do I employ a younger vocabulary? Does my voice sound young?

Realizing that I can’t really do anything about the content portion of the interview – my experience is what it is – I decided to switch up my standard interview appearance. Hollywood, I’ve been paying attention: I know that you can transform a dowdy but smart librarian into a smokin’ hottie by simply getting rid of her glasses and replacing her bun with sex kitten waves. Logically then, the opposite should be true as well. If I wore my glasses and minimal eye make-up, then I should look like the ideal employee, right? I’d look both older and more intelligent!

Only one way to find out…

I ventured into a brave new world and actively chose to wear my glasses instead of contacts to my interview. It went against all of my instincts, but I sucked it up and put on my glasses like a big girl. (Let me clarify: I actually really like my glasses – I just generally dislike having something on my face. That’s what she said.) Anyway, you know what? I think it just might have worked.

I was scheduled to meet with three different people and to be at the office for about an hour and a half. In reality, I was interviewing at the office for almost three full hours. The good news was that it didn’t feel like I was there for three hours – the time went by quickly. Well, time went by quickly until my last interview when all of a sudden I realized that: 1) I was starving, and 2) I had a headache from wearing my glasses. I’ve certainly been through worse in interviews though so I pushed ahead and mentally reminded myself to keep my eye on the prize: employment.

Key takeaway: Maybe appearance IS everything.