Preparing for an Interview

Each of us must continually engage in hair style trade-offs. Looking your very best all the time is just not realistic, unless maybe you are a model, a TV anchor woman or a movie star. Sometimes kids, job, money, time, energy or trying to pleasing someone else on the job, limits our ability to choose the right hair styles.

You can’t have it all, but you can prioritize!

Rank these issues in order of importance:

• Spending money on my hair
• Career or job advancement
• Attractiveness to potential partners
• Time to spend on my hair each day
• Pleasing others
• Lots of appointments at the hair salon
• Kids
• My self-esteem
• Getting compliments
• Being fashionable

Career and Job Interview Hair styles

If you’re preparing for an interview, your hair style is just as important as your clothes and maybe even more important. In a career change or job interview, first impressions are important. Studies have shown that an opinion is formed in the first four seconds of meeting. If you don’t make the right impression quickly, your interview skills are not going to matter.“Preparing for an Interview”

I’m married to a management trainer. My hubby spent many years training top-level managers. I sat down with him  recently and asked him what hair style advice he would give my readers in a job or career interview situation. Here are some of his suggestions:

• Look like your interviewer – If you’re interviewing with librarians, you better have some horn rimmed glasses and a bun or something like it, in your hair. If you’re interviewing for an Wall-Street job, you better have on a suit and conservative haircut. If you are interviewing for an entertainment career, you better wear an updo or polished style.

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• Never be outside the box – This is not the time to go with the latest edgy hair style, dramatic haircuts or creative hair colors. You never want to stand out . . . you want to look impeccably well-groomed and appropriate. When you appear polished and well-groomed, it often gives the impression of attention to detail, which is definitely in your favor.

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• Never, ever . . .  turn on the sex appeal. Women will hate you . . . and the male prospects will lose respect for your competency or question your intelligence (and probably make a pass instead). Keep your bed head styles and big hair looks for after hours.

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• Wear conservative, classic hair styles – One length bobs, layered bobs or inverted bobs are good shorter length hair styles. For longer hair, anything that is pulled up or back, such as twists and braids are great,  wear professional clean looking hair styles for preparing for an interview.

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• Keep your hair colors subdued – Avoid over-processed, blonde hair color. Studies have shown that the ‘dumb blonde’  image can easily result in a negative first impression and may even lead to discrimination. If you’re a bright red-head, you might want to consider toning it down a bit. The safest hair colors in the business world don’t stand out in a loud way;  sandy blondes, natural looking reds and subdued brunettes are a safer bet for landing the job.

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• Shorter hair styles are better than longer hair styles – Keeping your hair style length at or above the shoulders and neatly styled looks more professional than longer hairstyles. Longer hairstyles can be too distracting, either in a sex appealing way or an unfinished look.

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• Go short, but not too short – Avoid the short-short pixie hair cuts, unless you’re interviewing for a job in the food or medical profession.

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The bottom line; do not stand out from the crowd and always look healthy and impeccably groomed. Pay attention to the hair styles you see on your local TV anchor women for inspiration. Their hair styles are very carefully chosen to appeal to your local audience tastes and sensibilities and to avoid looking like dim wits.

Barb Quinn on Google+