Well Suited for the Job

It’s recruiting season and I too have found myself the possessor of magical slips of paper promising fame, fortune and dental benefits, if only I leap that great 30 minute hurdle: the interview. Thus, as I ready to join the masses—marching off, attaches in hand, seeking some security for their post-graduation future—I have inquired as to what I might do to prepare. Should I be able to list my three greatest strengths and weakness in 2.5 minutes while maintaining eye contact, poise and clarity of thought? Should I formulate a five, 10, 20 and 50 year plan with detailed bullet points and due consideration of market fluctuations? Should I consider signing away my first-born child if it means making it to the second round?

Why yes, cry my soothsayers—employed post-grads, house tutors and fellow opportunity-hunters—do all of the above. But while you are at it do one other thing: get to the mall Cinderella and buy yourself a gown because at this ball those in pants-suits won’t get past the door.

Alas, you may sigh in disbelief. But indeed, it is with great seriousness that I’ve been advised that the only thing more damning than telling Citicorp you’re only interested in I-banking for the money, more tragic than confusing a call option for a call girl or more unfortunate than printing your resume in Beesknees ITC 12 point font is the grave mistake of not wearing a skirt to an interview. If you don’t want to get hired, the wise ones say, then, by all means, wear pants.

Officially, the Office of Career Services (OCS) website counsels women “to wear a fairly conservative suit in a fairly conservative color.” However, in person OCS advisors (read: translators) explain that if a woman wants to play it safe, fairly conservative must be defined as a jacket and skirt. The interview-prep site WetFeet.com is more explicit, advising that “a skirt suit is de rigeur, and anything other than non-textured nude hose and heels is pushing the envelope of what’s acceptable.” No need to stop by Hootenanny for pleather and fishnets; apparently, in the interview world, just slipping into a pair of J. Crew flat-front trousers is wild enough to be labeled risque.

Thus, at a time when I should be consumed with acquiring the wit of Maureen Dowd, the political-savvy of Mary Matlin and the resiliency of Hillary, I instead find myself preoccupied with answering the pop-culture queries of Carrie Bradshaw. When my thoughts drift to interviews inevitably I am left with but one damning interrogatory gnawing at my brain: Despite strides in gender equality is it really true that what’s below a woman’s waist is still more important that what’s coming out of her mouth?

I’ve thought long and hard about the rationale behind the institutionalized pro-skirt bias.

Perhaps interviewers are in on breaking scientific research that I’m unaware of. Perhaps, a woman’s calf, when fully extended on two to three inch heels, displays some phenotypic marker of her I.Q. Perhaps the ability to see the exact shape of a woman’s kneecaps is intimately related to assessing her ability to advise corporate mergers/write for a newspaper/dissect a cadaver.

Or possibly, the unspoken policy is deeply feminist. Could it be that corporate America is using recruiting dress codes as a way of protesting the horrible repression of societies where women cannot bare their well-toned legs even if they want to? Have JP Morgan and N.O.W. topped Dubya and General Pervez Musharraf as the world’s strangest bedfellows?

Or maybe interviewers get kickbacks from the United Skirt-Makers of America Local 363. Who knows how deep Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are digging for capital in this bear market? Perhaps big-business is pro-worker after all?

Yet, despite the ever-clear logic of these justifications, I find them hard to swallow. When it comes to why my shins must be exposed to the sun, I just don’t see the light.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like skirts. I own several. And I wholeheartedly enjoy wearing them when the air temperature is above 65 degrees. I detest, however, the bone-chilling updraft that results from wearing a skirt to a mid-November interview (note that, contrary to advertisers’ claims, choosing to wear tights instead of sheer pantyhose does next to nothing to resolve this problem). And, despite my best efforts, I have yet to find a way of uncrossing and recrossing my legs without at least partially flashing an interviewer (note that, perhaps, this explains why the wearing of skirts is encouraged). But, even putting my petty complaints aside, even exercising the highest level of analytic rigor, I still cannot figure out what wearing a skirt has to do with my qualifications for a job.

Thus, as I hone my interview answers, polish my resume and look to my transcript for objective reassurance, I still cannot shake my nagging doubts. With out a skirt, is it really true that I’m just not well suited for a job?

Lauren E. Baer ’02 is a social studies concentrator in Dunster House. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.