Two weeks ago, someone in my comments told me that it’s fine to wear jeans to an academic job interview in 2026. Huh, I thought. Have standards really changed that much since my campus interview? Then I realized that we had a very unique chance to nail down what to wear to a professor job interview, with some actual data. So I asked Instagram to take a survey about it! Here are the results.
Methods, lol
I asked participants to answer 7 different questions about what to wear to a professor job interview. They were:
- What is your location (hoping to group by regional dress codes!)?
- What is your academic discipline?
- What is your experience with academic job interviews?
- What is the standard dress code for on-campus visits in your field?
- How much do the dress codes vary?
- How much tolerance does your field have for nontraditional appearances (e.g., shoud people cover tattoos or piercings on campus job talks)
- What advice would you give job seekers about dressing for the interview?
I was completely blown away, because the survey received 564 responses. Thank you to everyone who was generous with their time and expertise! A bunch of fields were represented, including:
- 128 participants in social sciences (22.7%)–note, Communication Studies was hanging out separately, because it lives in a bunch of different colleges, but if we add them to social sciences, the total is 160 participants.
- 103 participants in humanities (18.2%)
- 94 participants in natural sciences (16.6%)– as a note, I did break down STEM fields, but if you combined natural sciences, computer sciences, engineering, and mathematics, then STEM totaled 136 participants (24%)
Maybe I should have gotten IRB approval, shrugs. Here are our findings. I’m including some open-ended comments from participants throughout, because they were so good. Probably a follow-up post is coming!
What is the dress code for academic job interviews?
50% of respondents said the most common dress code for an on-campus interview was business casual, and 42% said business. Only 8% of respondents said smart casual attire (jeans and blouses, jeans and polo shirts, etc) was the most common dress code.
I would love to hear your reaction to this one!
“I think the expectation of professional dress is here to stay for them since they are being formally evaluated by the faculty. Once you are hired, there is MUCH more freedom. Faculty show up to teach in hoodies, ill-fitting shirts that don’t cover themselves entirely when they lift their arms, and sneakers (mostly the men, I’ve noticed). Women faculty dress professionally pretty consistently, but this depends on the individual personality, and things seem to be moving in the smart casual direction.”
How much wiggle room is there?
The West Coast is the most casual, BUT: Ok, this was interesting: There was a regional difference in how much respondents said the dress code varied! I asked on a scale of 1-5 how much participants would say that the dress norms varied across their field, but we really found was that people in specific locations said that dress norms varied: the participants who claimed the highest variability were overwhelmingly in European countries or the US West Coast.
Despite the protest from West Coasters that they are very casual, they still reported the most support for business casual style:
“Don’t be too stylish or formal (or feminine?). Err on the side of field clothes (hiking boots/sandals, very clean field pants, etc for non-job talk days). If you are dressed formally, don’t dress well (i.e. dated suit jacket).”
“So…damned if you do, damned if you don’t?”
Do interview outfits vary by discipline?
Social sciences and professional fields are more formal than STEM: I thought we would see a big difference between STEM and social sciences (just a hunch) and this ended up true! I copied the whole chart over so you could truly peruse, but, for example, 49% of social science respondents said business was the typical dress code, while only 20% of respondents in the natural sciences did.
I think this difference is even more stark if we lump more of the STEM fields together, but it’s also interesting to parse the differences even within STEM, for example, that the computer scientists or engineering had more respondents say business than smart casual, while the mathematics respondents were more in the middle!
“Unfortunately, I think a lot of the same gendered, ageist, and fat-phobic BS is still with us. I’ve heard even my relatively progressive colleagues comment about clothes (or adjacent comments about presentation).”
Are we covering the tattoos?
There are some field differences about tattoos and piercings: Sometimes people ask me if they should cover their tattoos for academic job interviews, and I generally tell them I think it is unnecessary (better to show up as yourself!). But, I asked on a scale of 1-5 how acceptable nontraditional styles would be on a campus visit, and there were slight field differences. Engineering, business, medicine, and law averaged the lowest scores in response to this question (2.17-2.88) while arts averaged the higher score (4.18).
“More non-traditional forms of dress and appearance are being accepted (which is awesome) however the idea of “dressing for the appropriate occasion” is not changing (ex. if you have a unique hair color, tattoos, etc. that’s great, but showing up to a professional event in sweats or graphic tees is still not appropriate).”
What advice do you have for what to wear to a professor job interview?
Thank goodness, we’re in the qualitative part of the data! Participants offered some AMAZING advice for how to dress for an on-campus interview. The most common advice was:
- Wear comfortable shoes that you could walk a campus tour in.
- Wear layers that are all interview appropriate. It’s easy to adapt to the formality and temperature if you are wearing a business casual shirt under a blazer, it’s harder if you’re wearing a tank top.
- Test all your clothes before the interview. Wear them out in the wild at least once!
- Come as yourself and make sure the clothes you are wearing are comfortable to you. Express your personality through small accessories.
- Research the department dress norms by checking out any social media, department headshots, and the website.
- Pack: A Tide pen, mints, deodorant, and bandaids.
“Business casual seems to remain the norm, with a little more personality being infused (brighter colors or patterns with dress pants, etc.).”
TLDR; go business casual to professor job interviews
Yep, that’s my ultimate conclusion here. Even if your department favors jeans, the vast majority of respondents said to go business casual or above. If you want to mess with those norms when hiring in your own department, tell candidates! Dress is such a tricky unspoken norm, it would be a small revolution as a hiring chair to tell people what is typical in your department.
And, yes, messing with professionalism as a discourse is great. But if you’re in a position of power and you’re asking job candidates to be the ones to take the risk and do that….maybe try to do it yourself before you ask people who are vulnerable to do it.
Thanks to my amazing friend Dr. Natalie for her help with the quantitative analysis. All errors are my own.
PS, if you want my guide for what to wear to campus interviews, it’s here!
This one is incredible!
Thank you!!!