Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Josh Tolan is the CEO of Spark Hire, a video-powered hiring network that connects job seekers and employers through video resumes and online interviews. Connect with him and Spark Hire on Facebook and Twitter.

You’ve researched the company and practiced your interview answers. What else is there to worry about? Unfortunately, many candidates flub their interview attire and make themselves undesirable hires in the process. Here are some of the worst fashion horror stories and what you can learn before you suit up for your next job interview:

You’re Not an Employee Yet

Companies come in all different shapes and sizes — and all different levels of formality. One of the biggest mistakes job seekers make is to show up for the interview dressed like an employee instead of a candidate.

“Since we’re a casual work environment with no dress code, we occasionally get the candidate that matches our attire and it comes off as overly presumptuous, overconfident or just plain sloppy,” said August Nielsen, HR Manager of Veterans United Home Loans.

Instead, you should dress for a job at least one rung on the career ladder above the one for which you’re applying. This will be highly impressive to your interviewer and show just how seriously you’re taking this opportunity. Plus, it will convey the message to your potential employer that you’re interested in moving up and bettering yourself.

“I also interviewed a guy that wore old tennis shoes with a suit. What was that all about?” Nielsen wondered. “They weren’t even new tennis shoes.”

Remember, the interview is not the right moment to try out a quirky new style. You’re not Mark Zuckerberg, and hoodies or old tennis shoes won’t make an impressive interview statement.

You Forgot Your Pants

A recent survey showed six out of ten companies use video interviews in the hiring process. So, chances are, you’ll have one — and you can’t afford to think the video interview is somehow less formal than a face-to-face meeting — it’s not.

Just because the interviewer is looking directly at your top half doesn’t mean you can ignore what you wear below the waist.

“We had a candidate who was very impressive from the waist up,” said Sandi Webster, Principal for Consultants 2 Go. “However, he had to run to his printer for a sheet we had sent and he was wearing pajama bottoms.”

It’s important to dress exactly as you would for any in-person meeting. While video interviewing provides the luxury of interviewing from home, you should still present yourself as if you’re going to the office. Not only does it help you avoid the pajama debacle, but also it helps give you a psychological edge. If you’re dressed for the part, you’ll be more likely to act the part, as well.

You’re Repping Other Companies

Because your clothes tell a story about your candidacy, if you don’t pay attention to the small details, employers will think you’ll miss the big picture on the job as well.

“If you’re interviewing at LL Bean, don’t wear J. Crew. If you’re interviewing at CNA Insurance, please don’t carry a portfolio emblazoned with the Prudential logo,” said Lida Citroen, branding specialist and founder of LIDA360. “These small missteps make the interviewer question your attention to detail and commitment to going the extra mile for the job.”

Instead, keep things neutral. It’s good practice to stay away from loud prints or company logos altogether, which might be a distraction anyway. So, swap your branded briefcase for a plain case to avoid any issues.

You Didn’t Check the Thermometer

Job interviews make many candidates extremely nervous. If you live in a hot climate or your interview is during a hot summer day, this can be a recipe for a sweaty disaster.

Resume writer and career counselor Gaye Weintraub remembers a job candidate who showed up for the job interview with professional attire that was too tight, and he had giant sweat stains under his arms.

“While he dressed appropriately for his interview, it was difficult to get past the sweat stains and his unbelievably red face. I felt sorry for him, which is not the type of reaction any job seeker wants from an interviewer,” Weintraub said.

It’s important not to forget you are only human, and the combination of nerves and raising temperatures can be lethal. Instead, Weintraub advises candidates to bring an extra shirt along if the temperatures rise and the candidate is prone to sweating. This way, job seekers can change in a nearby bathroom before the interview and appear fresh and ready for the actual meeting.

“I tell my clients that it takes an interviewer only a few seconds to form an opinion of them. It is imperative that when they walk into the room, they are well-groomed, well-dressed, smell nice and have a smile,” Weintraub said.

You Treated the Interview Like a Tailgate

You want to dress for your interview, not for your next social engagement. Catherine Bell, former fashion designer and President of PRIME Impressions tells the story of how a man showed up for a mass interview for Sears wearing shorts and a sleeveless tank top. To top it all off, he was also holding an open can of beer in his hand.

“He obviously had another agenda outside of landing a job that day,” Bell said.

Carving out time in your hectic life for an interview can be tough, especially if you already have a job keeping you busy. It’s important, however, to focus all your attention on the interview at hand, instead of what else you have going on for the rest of the day. Turn off your mobile devices so nothing will beep, vibrate or chirp during your interview. And if you’re planning on tailgating after your interview, leave the drinks in the cooler.

If you can avoid some of these fashion pitfalls, you’ll be able to impress hiring managers with your appearance, so what you wear doesn’t detract from what you say.

What are some of the worst job-interview fashion mistakes you’ve seen? Share in the comments.

Job number one as an entrepreneur is landing the first 10 or so core employees. You need to have a clear idea of the kind of talent you want to attract, because this core group sets up your employee brand and your startup’s DNA. As a startup, you’re unproven. You need to have a clear sense of the different types of people you need in the company and how to unify them under a common culture with its own customs, beliefs, and procedures. You also need to be a leader who’s easy to follow, with a clear mission and a strong sense of the results you want to achieve. Your employee brand is the kind of people who represent your company’s values, work style, and personality.

Thinking in terms of employer brand and employee brand can be a powerful strategy for creating a culture that champions its people and helps them flourish. Having a strong internal brand can help grow your business, because you’re more likely to attract the best talent and everyone will feel challenged.

Creating A Growth Culture

You’re not trying to run a social club. Your goal is to win in the market. But to do that you need to create a special culture.

Make sure that you hire people who have skills, resources, and knowledge that you don’t have. Even the most well-rounded entrepreneur isn’t good at everything. You’ve got to figure out your shortcomings and fill the gaps with team members who have those aptitudes. Otherwise, it is unlikely that you’ll be around after the start-up phase. Make sure that you have people who can help you land business and bring in revenue–critical tasks in the start-up phase.

You need to create a workplace with the right amount of challenge and expectations, the right amount of freedom and control. You want everyone to be a growth agent empowered to do her job and help grow the business.

Studies show that the worst work environments are those in which people have little say over their day and always have to follow someone else’s orders. They feel like a cog in a slow-moving corporate machine and consequently don’t do as well as those who work in companies where people have more freedom to decide how to handle projects and assignments. According to these studies, money isn’t the key driver for most people. It’s working in an environment where people have the ability to grow and develop their potential.

Radical Creativity

How do you create a dynamic, innovative culture where it’s everyone’s job to come up with ideas and grow the business?

First, create a culture where it’s OK to fail. The most innovative people are the ones with the most ideas. Most of them are bad ideas that fail. Some companies are even rewarding risk-taking that fails with employee-recognition bonuses and trophies, or setting aside time in the week for new idea generation.

Second, set up the offices and common areas so that there is lots of mingling in the workplace. Contrary to the image most people have of the solitary inventor or entrepreneur, it turns out that most breakout ideas don’t come from loners. Innovative ideas aren’t solitary things. Most successful ideas come from people interacting with each other in environments where ideas are discussed and shared.

That’s why there is a long history of simultaneous inventions. Transformational ideas like the electric battery, the telephone, and the radio were all made by several people who came up with the same idea at practically the same time. Most of them didn’t even know each other, but they were plugged into what was happening in their industry and influenced by similar ideas, what some researchers call the hive mind. That’s the kind of culture you want to create for your business, with all your people, not just the senior people, reaching for innovative ideas.

You want to create a company where people are dying to work because it’s not just work–it’s fun and things are happening. To win the war on talent, many Silicon Valley companies offer elevated perks like free gourmet lunches and on-site haircuts and dry cleaning. You can take your pet to work at some companies; game-maker Zynga will even pay for pet insurance. (The company is named after the CEO’s dog, after all.)

Resist the Copycat Syndrome

Groupthink is when everyone in a group starts thinking alike, and it’s alive and well in the business world. Most entrepreneurs generally resist group-think and the copycat syndrome, but they can creep in as your company expands. People in the same company share so many of the same influences and belong to so many of the same clubs and organizations that they can even start to dress alike.

Don’t try to copy the competition’s culture no matter how successful they are. You want to stay on top of what your competitors are doing to be competitive, but you need to create your own company customs and ways of staying in the lead. The best way to be a leadership brand is to harness the creativity and business thinking of every member of your diverse organization. That can only happen when you encourage and reward out-of-the-box thinking and new ideas for making the business more competitive.

The business world is dynamic, so you have to be strong with your external customers and with your internal customers–your employees. Don’t leave an opening for a new entrepreneur to gallop on the scene with something new and steal away your best talent. You want your company to be the one everyone is clamoring to join. To do that, you need to:

· Make everyone a corporate entrepreneur who is a growth agent for the company.

· Encourage innovation and ideas at every level, especially the frontlines.

· Create a culture with customs and rituals that are special to your company.

· Make sure all employees know their objectives and key results

· Be easy to follow as a leader.

Image: Flickr user dvidshub

In today’s changing work environment, it’s important for leaders to provide clarity of direction. If they don’t, fear, frustration, and inefficiency start to creep in.

In the same way that a bicycle is wobbly when it’s standing still and becomes more stable the faster you pedal, the same is true with personnel issues at work. It’s when the organization is standing still that people start to squabble.

Three leadership strategies can help. The first is having a clear sense of where you’re going. The second is having a plan for your people so they each know their role going forward. The third is having the tenacity and stick-to-itiveness to make that plan sustainable.

Fail in any of these three areas, and the result will be lackluster financial performance and the creation of an atmosphere where negative human dynamics will begin to grow. Humans cooperate best when they are all moving toward a common goal. When an organization is standing still, the pushing and shoving starts. Parents know this. When do the kids start fighting in the car? When they are sitting still with no place to go.

Clear direction is especially important when dealing with people who’ve been with the organization for an extended period of time. Leaders and organizations generally do a good job of clarifying goals as they are getting new people up to speed. With long-time employees, however, leaders often assume that the employee instinctively knows what’s important. As a result, leaders generally don’t spend the same amount of time and energy communicating clear objectives to seasoned employees that they do with new hires. When this happens, it’s not unusual for veteran employees to lose the focus and discipline necessary to achieve their individual goals.

Three strategies for leaders

Good performance begins with clear goals. That’s job one. If you don’t know where you’re going–as the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Wonderland–any road will get you there. Leadership is about going somewhere, and clear agreements are the first step. It’s a process of creating clarity about why we’re here, what we’re doing, and how we’re going to work together.

We did a study a number of years ago with a large petroleum company in North America that shows how rarely this clarity occurs. We asked more than 2,000 employees and their managers to share their goal expectations with us. To begin, we asked the employees to rank the top five things they felt they were responsible for. Then we asked the managers to list and prioritize the five things they were actually holding each of their direct reports accountable for. We saw only a 19% agreement across the population of 2,000 people!

After clear goals are set, leaders must use strong communication skills to make sure everyone’s eyes are on the ball. This includes regular one-on-one conversations with direct reports that include feedback and evaluation of how each person is doing against established targets. This helps employees understand how their role impacts the larger picture. It also allows people to have a say in the actions, decisions, priorities, and goals that are subsequently set. Leadership is done best when it is something you do with people instead of something you do to them.

The third step is for managers to help people notice and experience the incremental successes they are having. In the past, this was accomplished through extrinsic reward and recognition. Today we use a more intrinsic approach that focuses on discovering the incentives that are meaningful to individual employees to fuel their passion for the task or project they are working on. It’s about creating an environment that leads to sustainable performance.

A little structure goes a long way

On the surface, producing effective results can sound like it’s about driving performance and cracking the whip–but, when it’s done right, it’s more about moving people in the right direction. You can begin by answering these questions: What are we trying to accomplish mutually? What is the organization trying to accomplish? What is our department’s role in accomplishing that? And what are individual contributors being held accountable for?

Your role as a leader is to use your management skills to place a certain rigor and clarity around goals. When performance is not what it should be, first ask yourself whether goals have been made clear. Goal clarity helps reduce issues regarding relationships and personnel that plague so many organizations. Set a clear vision and show people how they can contribute to it. When folks are moving in a common direction with clear goals, most workplace struggles will take care of themselves.

Image: Flickr user Paul Joran

Time to cut someone loose? Even if it’s long past time for them to go, firing an employee can be difficult. Follow these five tips and you’ll be on the road to happiness again.

Parting is such sweet sorrow–unless you’re saying goodbye to an employee who should have been gone a long time ago. Here are five tips to make firing someone easier on the both of you.

Get to the point. Long goodbyes are painful, so be brief. This isn’t the time to remind the employee about every conversation you had regarding his performance, nor is it the time to tell the employee how talented he is as you are showing him the door.

Prepare a brief statement and stick to your script. It’s those who veer off course that find themselves driving over a cliff.

Expect the worse. This isn’t going to be one of those situations where you come together and sing “Kumbaya.” This is going to be a tough conversation, even if you suspect the employee knows it’s coming. Be prepared. If you think there is a chance the employee will go crazy, then have someone from HR sitting by your side or another manager who can help diffuse what may be a hot situation.

Terminations are fairly standard. Anticipate questions that may be asked and have an answer ready. This will prevent you from having to get back in touch with an employee who may try to pull you back into the conversation you just had.

Don’t try and have the last word. Okay, so you wanted to say the words, “You’re fired,” and you’ve finally gotten the nerve. You may be thinking that you aren’t going to let anyone take this satisfaction away from you. Be open to the possibility that an employee may ask to resign.

Consider this request carefully and if asked, say yes. The objective is to remove this employee from the organization. It’s better for all, if the employee leaves with his dignity in hand and it may save your organization from having to go through a nasty unemployment hearing or worse yet, a wrongful discharge suit.

Find a quiet place. In workplaces where everyone works in the open, this may sound easier than it is. Look for a conference room with shades so you can shield the employee from having others observe his last hour at the office.

If no such place exists, look for a quiet table in a coffee shop where you can have a conversation. Or, wait until others have left the office so you can take care of the business at hand.

Just do it! I know business owners who are still talking about people they should have fired years ago, yet these employees are still with the firm. Pick a date and move forward.

If things haven’t gotten any better in a year’s time or more, they certainly aren’t going to improve anytime soon. Do yourself and your employee a favor. Say sayonara so you both can get on with your lives.

Image: Flickr user Vicente Villamón

Last week I attended a fascinating forum on paid family leave at the Ford Foundation. As is often the case in any discussion about the demands of work and family, the need for work flexibility was front and center, with the primary challenge being, “How do we get middle managers to support it?”

Middle-manager support can be the difference between success and failure of a work flexibility strategy and, yet, it remains elusive. The advice on how to solve the problem ranges from “Put the policy in place. Tell managers this is the way it is. Reward those who do it and punish those that don’t,” to “You can’t lead a horse to water. I guess you need to wait for the dinosaurs to die off sigh.”

In my experience, a top-down policy and an ultimatum will fail. It only creates more resistance. And waiting for a generation of managers to leave is not only inefficient, but it unnecessarily leaves money on the table as the organization and its people miss out on the benefits of flexible work.

Over the years, we’ve succeeded in getting even some of the most skeptical middle managers on board the work flexibility train. But it requires a larger upfront commitment of resources (e.g. time, money, and people) than it takes to write a policy or rely on attrition. However, the return on that investment is a group of middle managers who not only accept work flexibility but understand how to use it as a powerful tool to run their business.

Here are five the ways we’ve gotten middle managers to support flexible work:

Ask middle managers to help articulate the “why” or business case for work flexibility in your organization, and then let them participate in determining what that flexibility will look like.   Interview middle managers–the supporters of flexibility as well as the naysayers. Ask them why they think it is or is not important to be more flexible in the way work is done. Encourage them to tell you how it will solve their business challenges. Gather groups of managers and employees together to expand this shared vision they’ve created. At the end of the process, people feel invested in this approach to flexible work that they developed themselves, bottom up and top down.

Allow middle managers to freely express the “prices” they fear they will pay, while also helping them to focus on the payoffs of work flexibility.  I love naysayers. When I am consulting to a group of managers about work flexibility and one of them has the courage to say, “Yeah, but I’m going to be left doing more work,” I want to hug them. They are articulating one of the very real fears many of the middle managers have about changing the way work is done. When you give middle managers a chance to share those concerns freely, they are able to move beyond them. They start to see the long list of benefits from having a more flexible approach to work. But if they can’t, they get stuck behind the fears.

Make sure that work flexibility in the organization is built on a partnership model where employees have as much responsibility for the success of it as the managers do.  Too many organizations put the responsibility for all aspects of work flexibility on the middle manager. They are expected to figure out what will work for the employee, how it will be managed day-to-day, and how the work will get done. No wonder managers don’t support it! When work flexibility is a partnership between the employee and the manager, the employee takes the lead and presents a plan outlining the type of flexible work that meets their needs and the needs of the business. The employee works with the manager to ensure their job is getting done. And, if the flexibility is not succeeding, they figure out a solution together, or they agree to end it. This is a much more appealing approach. Unfortunately, very few businesses prepare their employees and middle managers to make this type of partnership succeed.

Acknowledge that middle managers are people, too, who are increasingly under pressure to deliver more with less.  Middle managers have lives outside of work as well, and might also enjoy greater flexibility to manage his or her work/life fit. Also, the pressure to achieve quarterly goals must be acknowledged in the discussion. To ignore that pressure causes the idea of flexibility to lose credibility with middle managers.

Establish the expectation, at the beginning, that any issues related to work flexibility that cause the group not to meet its goals will be resolved by everyone, not just the manager.  For example, a manager finds that having two people in the group teleworking from home on the same day causes difficulty with customer coverage. That manager would call the group together and ask them to help her come up with a way to solve the problem. She wouldn’t be expected to take it upon herself to make it work.

As long as we make middle managers solely responsible for the success of something that they don’t help create, that doesn’t acknowledge their realities, and that they don’t fully understand, flexible work will continue to hit the roadblock of their resistance and fail.

What have you found works to get middle managers to support a more flexible approach to how, when, and where work is done?

Image: Flickr user smcgee