What you say on camera is only part of how the people watching your interview perceive you, so what you wear is an important choice. Izo Creative has conducted hundreds of interviews with business leaders, artists and everyday people with amazing stories. This is our advice on what to wear for if you’re being interviewed.
Be mindful of the context
To dress appropriately for your video interview, try to understand the context of the video. Who is the audience? What’s the look and feel? You’ll probably choose to present yourself differently in a video that will be circulated among business leaders than a piece targeted toward gamers.
Be Authentic
What you wear sends the audience a message about who you are. Wear something that makes you feel confident and at ease. Pick an outfit that is you.
First impressions matter
The video where your interview appears may be your first impression to a large number of people. A shirt and tie may tell the audience that you are professional and traditional, a colorful necklace may show that you’re a non-conformist, while a plain t-shirt may say you’re laid back. So, when you’re choosing your wardrobe for the interview ask yourself, “What does this say about me?”
Rules
Even if you’re being authentic and presenting yourself the way you’d like to be seen, there are some hard and fast rules to follow when appearing on camera for an interview.
Avoid logos, copyrighted characters & images, graphics and words. These can be distracting and you want to avoid conflicts with copyright holders.
Even your own company logo may look tacky. We don’t like to overdo it on your branding. Video professionals can always add a logo as a graphic, but it may prove more difficult to remove it from your clothing.
Take off your badge or name tag. Again, your name will be added as a graphic, and wearing a name tag just looks a bit silly on camera.
You’ll see a lot of advice telling you to avoid bright colors, but we disagree. If loud colors are what make you feel good, go for it! However we recommend avoiding “highlighter” colors, like blaze orange or high-visibility yellow. We don’t want you coming in looking like you just got in from hunting in the woods or cycling across town.
Most patterns are okay, but beware of very fine patterns. This can cause a moiré pattern (pictured below) to appear on the camera. Moiré occurs when you overlay two patterns, in this case the pattern on the shirt, and the pattern of pixels on the camera sensor. It’s complicated, but if you want to understand more you can check out this article. There isn’t an easy fix for this, other than a wardrobe change on set.
Comments