You finally got the job at the big financial firm. Congratulations! You are going to help people understand how to hedge against inflation and teach them ways to handle their money. But you will need more than just understanding finances. You need to look the professional part.

All our lives from our parents to society itself, we have been told the saying “it’s the clothes that make the man.” This phrase has two meanings and both of them pertain to the topic of this article.

One way to interpret this phrase is simply that you can and will be judged by other people with just a passing glance. Not only will you be judged, but based on their ruling of you and your threads, they will treat you accordingly.

The second interpretation can be a tad ambiguous, but to put it in simpler terms, by dressing in a particular way you can actually sway destiny in your favor. You will be able to shape your own future and change the way you perform and carry yourself at work or just in life in general. Another saying can actually wrap up the second meaning rather nicely: “fake it ’till you make it!”

The First Impression Matters

Let’s say you’re applying for a job, your first job right out of college, with your bachelor’s in accounting. Perhaps you’re applying to some kind of financial firm. That’s smart considering your bachelors in accounting. Anyway, when applying for a job at a financial firm, if you aren’t sweating bullets looking through your closet for your nicest button-up, then you need to get your priorities in check, because the first impression is always in the looks department, and you want to look the part of the job you want.

Not to worry though. Here are tips to offer you if you are interested in impressing your new potential bosses in your interview. You only get one opportunity to make your one and only first impression on a person and that impression starts with what you look like

Tips for Dressing to Impress

Number one is good grooming and hygiene. Good grooming and hygiene are imperative to your day-to-day interactions with the public, whom you will be working alongside 90% of your workday. Grooming and hygiene include showering, brushing your teeth, doing your hair, wearing clean clothes, and perhaps a small amount of cologne.

Number two is wearing earth-tone long-sleeve button-up collared shirts. Appropriate earth tone colors include white, grey, brown, black, and dark green. These colors come across as serious and professional and say, “I know what I’m doing.”

Number three is black pants. Black is the only accommodating secondary color to complement earth tones in that kind of financial work environment.

Number four is optional. It is a solid-colored tie. The reason why the tie is optional is that you really don’t need one especially if you have a really nice jacket, and you deem it necessary. The color must be solid as patterns tend to come across as silly, childish, and not serious. As for the color, that depends on the color of your shirt.

Number five is also optional but highly recommended. I am talking about the jacket. The jacket must be a dark color such as grey or black.
Number six is not optional. Number six is your shoes. Oxford-style dress shoes are widely accepted as the default dress shoe, or the poster child if you will.

Other Tips to Impress

Another tip is to impress your employer with your relevant knowledge. A topic relevant to financial firms that you can bring up is impressive. Understand good interviewing skills and think about what you want to say before you have the interview.

The tips above all recommend clothes that can tend to be on the pricey side. Not everyone can afford really nice classy clothes. Perhaps you can get some hand-me-downs from your older brother, sister, mother, or father, depending on your gender and what kind of clothes you decide to wear to your interview.

I did not cover women’s attire to wear in the dress to impress bullet points, but the internet is full of great ideas for women on how to dress for interviews and careers. Dressing right can nail the interview and get you the job.

These tips that I provided you with today will no doubt help you land your very first financial firm job ever. Those four years you put in at college to get your bachelors in accounting will not go to waste. You can rest assured that the knowledge that has been imparted to you will carry on to the next level and will help you far into the future and someday you can pass on the knowledge to someone else in need.

Dressing to impress is a proven science-backed theory that has concrete evidence to show that dressing to impress really works.