Alli (Alison) Peck addresses whether people should change their appearance for job interviews. She argues primarily that candidates should present their authentic selves and not have to change for employers, but acknowledges exceptions: if someone is desperate (financial need) they may choose to alter appearance (cover tattoos, tone down bright hair) to increase perceived professionalism. She discusses the halo effect (appearance influencing perceived competence) and shares a personal anecdote about buying and wearing glasses to feel and look more professional for a STEM job interview. The video closes by inviting viewer opinions.
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What's up, YouTubers? I'm Alison, aka Ali, from corporate, and this career advice video topic is coming from a question I got on my last YouTube video and I'm gonna answer it for you. So the question is, the question is specifically, I have a pink ribbon or a pink piece of hair, and I have an interview coming up. Should I change my hair for the interview? And now that was the specific question. The question more broadly is, should I change my appearance in order to get a job? So I have a couple different thoughts about this. Unfortunately, my views are not just black and white. Yes or no, One way or the other, I'm going to tell you why you should change your appearance before a job interview and when you should not change your appearance before a job interview. So let's start with why you should not change your appearance for a job interview. And this is relationship advice as well, along with a lot of my other career development videos. I believe that you should not change your appearance before a job interview because you want to put yourself forward as yourself, your true self, and you should not have to change for anybody. And if you show up to an interview looking like and feeling like and dressing like who you really are inside and expressing your truest self, the people who want you around, the people who want to give you a job, the people who are going to be accepting of you, they're going to hire you. If you put your true self forward and people are not accepting of you and they do not want to hire you, trust me, you did not want to work for them in the first place. That is a little bit about why you should not change your appearance. Now I'm going to talk a little bit about when you might want to change your appearance for a job interview. If you have a big scar on your face, I do not think you should try to cover it up. If you are a black woman and you have big beautiful hair, I do not think you should try and change it for a job interview. However, if you have done something to your body or your appearance in order to express yourself, like having bright pink hair and you're interviewing for a corporate office job, or if you have tattoos on your face, or if you have inappropriate tattoos, there is a case to be made for changing your appearance for one reason only. If you are very desperate for a job and you are at risk of not being able to pay your bills, if you have lost your job and you really, really, desperately need another one as soon as humanly possible, and you want to use the art of psychology to increase your chances of getting a job. You have the option to change your appearance if you want to. If you want to cover up your tattoos with makeup, that may increase your chances of looking more professional and seeming more professional. However, if you do that for the interview, it's going to be kind of weird. If you show up day one for the job and you've got a bunch of tattoos they didn't know about, if you have bright pink hair and you wear a hat or you wear a wig or you hide it in the zoom call for the interview and then you show up day one and you have bright pink hair, it might throw people off a little bit. But if you are very desperate to get a job, you have the option of changing your appearance in major or minor ways in order to increase your chances that the interviewers will find you more professional looking. Now, again, the reason that I started this video with why I don't think you should change your appearance, that is the main advice that I'm giving in this video. However, there's something in psychology called the halo effect. I think it's called the halo effect and essentially what the halo effect is is good looking people, better looking people, more attractive people. Society automatically looks at them and assumes that they're smarter, they're, they're more skilled, they're better at their job, they're more intelligent, they're nicer. And you can use your imagination to understand why that would be the case. But if you are very desperate for a job and you are at risk of not being able to pay your rent, or not being able to put food on the table for your family, and you have the ability to change your appearance in order to look more professional for a job interview, you have the option to do so. I have done this before in a very minor way and I'll tell you how I think we can all agree that in society, people that wear glasses, reading glasses, look smarter. I don't know why that is. I don't know why that is, but it's kind of a widely accepted notion that people that wear glasses, they, you know, I wear glasses every day when I'm working. When I'm reading. The nerd emoji in text is a smiley face with glasses on. It's just a widely accepted societal thing that people who wear glasses look smarter. I'm not sure why. If you know why, comment below. I'm not trying to be critical of people that don't wear glasses or who do, but if you know what I'm talking about, you know What I'm talking about. So a couple jobs ago, before a job interview, I was looking in the mirror and I'm like, I want to appear smarter. I am a woman who works in stem. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And sometimes I get really confused about where to work. And so I thought, for this one job a few years ago, what if I had some really nerdy looking reading glasses for the interview? Would that help me get the job? For some reason, I decided yes. And I went to a LensCrafters and I ordered a pair of prescription glasses. They weren't just fake glasses, they were prescription. But I decided not to wear my contacts and to get reading glasses for this job interview. And they were big, bulky glasses. And I'll put a picture right here. I got the glasses just in time for the interview. I'm talking like 20 minutes before I even told the guy, you know, he said he wasn't gonna have them ready till that Saturday. And I'm like, if there's any chance you could have them ready by Thursday afternoon, I want to wear them for an interview. I think it's gonna make me look more intelligent. I really need this job. It's my dream job. And he said, okay, I can make it work. So I got the glasses, I wore them for the interview. It made me subconsciously feel like I looked better and more smart, more intelligent. And I think that I was able to put my best foot forward because I felt like I looked the part, but I ended up getting the job. I still think it might have been partially because of the glasses. Maybe 5%, maybe less, 95% or more because of how. How I performed in the interview. But that story is to showcase one example of how I chose to change my appearance for a job interview. Whether it had anything to do with me getting the job, I will never know. Hopefully it didn't. Because every job out there in the US Says that they do not discriminate based on age, race, gender, geographical location, everything like that. I assume that physical appearance is one of those things, which is great that we don't discriminate against physical appearance. But the point of this video is if you are desperate for a job and you want to increase your chances of getting that job, you have the option to change your appearance. Some people can. Some people don't have that option. But if you do have the option, I've done it before. I feel like it gave me more confidence. But if you are not desperate for the job and you want to put your authentic, true self forward and only work with people who are accepting of your authentic, true self. Do not change your appearance. So that's it for this video. Let me know what you think. Let me know if you would change your appearance if you could. Let me know if you would have, you know, if you have tattoos on your face or if you have a scar or if you have big, beautiful hair and you absolutely would not change your appearance for an interview. Let me know why. I'm really curious there. Unfortunately, there is no right or wrong answer to this question. Sorry, I'm kind of nonpartisan on this one, but what can you do? So let me know what you think in the comments and like and subscribe to this video and my channel and I will catch you in the next one.
