Declan and I were half way through a bottle of Malbec at Priya’s flat in November when things got heated. The argument, such as it was, was about nothing particularly sexy: a job interview at a marketing agency in Leeds. Priya’s cousin Declan was due to interview there the following day and was stressing about wearing his white Sambas with a shirt and trousers, and Priya’s boyfriend – who shall remain nameless, but shall be referred to as Bartholomew for reasons that will become clear – said you cannot wear trainers, ever, to an interview. Full stop. And that was that.
I said that was bullshit.
He said I’d clearly never worked anywhere that cared. We went back and forth; someone’s dog started barking. It was, genuinely, one of the sillier disagreements I’ve had as an adult. If we’re listing all my arguments in my head I’ve had a two hour boxing match about whether a cardi counts as a jacket.
But it did get me thinking about why it bothered me so much. It wasn’t Bartholomew saying he didn’t like trainers – that’s fine, people can wear whatever they like – but how certain he was. No trainers ever. As if there’s only one interview in the whole of business land being sat at any given time and anyone else apart from Declan is just pretending to work in an office. That’s not how it works. So let’s not.
If you work in offices, you’ve got interviews. You’ve also probably been on the other side of them, or seen friends stressing about footwear they don’t think will cut it. You know interviewees exist who show up inappropriately dressed and you know they don’t get the job. But they’re not the ones asking the question. The question gets asked so frequently because the answer people are getting isn’t nuanced enough. It’s either “trust me cowboy, just wear shoes with a proper heel” from someone who hasn’t sat across from a panel since uni, or “fuck no you’re better than that” from someone who worked investment banking in the mid 2000s and hasn’t lived outside that culture since.
So here’s where I sit on it, after roughly ten years of watching people hire and not hire others for things that often had fuck all to do with their CV: it depends on what you’re interviewing for, and the hard work is figuring out which side of that line you fall on, not learning a rule.
Don’t worry the line exists.
Context is king, literal shoes be damned
If you’re interviewing at Skilled Lawyers LLP, or HICOMBANK or anywhere that’s owned by either institution, or frankly anywhere that still has a dress code email longer than three sentances, wearing trainers is a risk that isn’t worth taking. Not because trainers are bad, or rude, but because office institutions have assumed level of formality built into every process. Showing up in Balenciaga sneakers to interview at Bateson et al is not just wearing trainers, it’s saying “I have not done enough research on this company to know the culture, and I don’t care enough to find out.”
It doesn’t bode well when the job itself probably requires you to constantly analyse and adapt to office culture.
Luckily, that’s not most jobs. Most jobs are at startups. At digital agencies. Small businesses who maybe wear waistcoats to sell financial advice but don’t wear skirts that reach the ground and definitely don’t make you use the ‘freshers’ print function on the dot matrix printer when you start. And, in that world, a smart pair of trainers, clean white ones, not the ones you wore when you were helping your friend move to Camden and forgot to brush off after, trouser that actually fit you and a shirt that hasn’t been slept in are perfect. They read as someone who knows what they’re walking into. My friend Marguerite hires junior designers at an agency in Manchester and told me she views anyone who turns up in suits with suspicion because she knows they haven’t googled the company prior to interviewing. “They’re not wrong for wearing a suit,” she said, “but being wrong by wearing a suit is very wrong.”
That’s what Bartholomew was missing at Priya’s house, and that’s what the don’t wear sneakers people miss. Wearing clothes to an interview has never really been about the clothes, it’s about showing people you took the time to research the culture you want to be in. Trainers can be the right answer to that question. They can equally be the wrong one. We’re trying to find which answer it is, not memorise bullshit rules.
That said…
Clean beats nasty every time.
Look. I am going to say something here because it seems the point of these dumb articles. In 2019 I wore trainers to an interview for a copywriting gig. They were old Adidas Stan Smiths I’d had for years but they were gross. Yellowish from wearing them so much, scraped on one shoe where I’d kicked a door frame moving in at the start of rental, and I didn’t notice how gross they were until I was on the train to the interview. I remember thinking “they’re fucking white trainers they’ll be fine” but not bothering to look closer in the morning. To be fair to me, the interviewer was a total beast called Rosalind who I ended up working for two years afterwards, but she did tell me on one of our better days that she noticed how filthy my shoes were when I sat down and subconsciously marked me as someone who either didn’t own a pair of trainers that weren’t used or didn’t care enough to look at them beforehand. Either of those things did not scream “care about detail” for a job where literally every single piece we did had to be 110% detail oriented.
Obviously I got the job. But only despite my shoes, not because of them. And that’s the distinction. If Ros had been choosing between me and someone who turned up with clean shoes both wearing similar levels of professionalism I will never have liked my chances.
So the real rule, if there is one, isn’t trainers vs no trainers. It’s dirty vs clean. It’s put together vs rifling through your wardrobe fifteen minutes beforehand because you’re late. A pair of pristine, white trainers with whiter laces, not grubby from being worn sweaty twice a week for the last three years says a different thing to trainers that went everywhere with you last summer.
My mate Osei recuits for tech startups and has interviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of people over the years and told me he literally doesn’t care about the trainers question most of the time. What he does care about is if someone obviously tried with their whole outfit or threw something on in the hope it vaguely passed for “office wear”. “It’s not the trainers I mind,” he said to me over drinks, “it’s how little else people think about.”
And honestly that’s the point. You’re not asking “are sneakers acceptable?” You’re asking “does this make me look like I put thought into my appearance?” If the answer to that is yes, fresh trainers with tailored trousers and a nice shirt is absolutely acceptable. If your trainers are part of a “fuck it, I’m wearing my hoodie too” kind of outfit then sure, interviewers will know you didn’t try, even if they can’t explain why.
OK but what aboutcomfort?
Okay, finally, the real point. You will interview better if you’re comfortable. I knew this lesson when I stupidly wore a pair of heels to interview at an agency in Bristol I couldn’t afford to blow. Heels I’d only bought the day before because they looked “kind of like Doc Martins but not” and was severely regretting by the time I’d walked from the train, up a goddamn hill that Google Maps said was “12 minute walk” but was more like “I thought you were cycling? Get the fuck back down here” uphill. I ended up with a blister on my heel about the size of a two pound coin and spent half the interview thinking about how to word my answers and half how to stop my foot from hurting. I did not get that job. Honestly I probably blame the shoes too much but I was crippled walking around for a week afterwards so they were not helping.
Contrast that with my friend Winnie, who wore New Balances to interview at an ad agency. Solid pair of trainers she’d had for over a year broken in already so they weren’t hurting her feet, but so clean she’d wiped them down with an old toothbrush the night before. When I asked her how it went she said she honestly felt like herself, not like somebody trying to look like they worked in an office. She got the job.
Correlation isn’t causation and I’m obviously not suggesting you’ll nail the interview if you just wear clean sneakers but I do think there’s something to be said for looking sharp and feeling like you can breathe in your shoes. If feeling like you can breathe helps you answer questions more fluently and confidently then suddenly picking shoes becomes far less important than actually doing well at the interview itself.
TL;DR: wear whatever the fuck you want as long as you look like you made a choice
So what does all this mean for ol’ Bartholomew and his “NEVER WEAR TRAINERS” bullshittery? Nothing good, I’m afraid. “Never” is never the answer to these problems because never isn’t nuanced enough for a world where some offices want you to arrive in a blazer so crispy they’re afraid to sit in it, others will actively be against wearing a blazer, and some won’t give two fucks what you wear as long as you’reNot wearing trainers to interviews is not a ‘rule’ it’s making an informed decision based on the company you’re interviewing for. And sure, Declan wore the white Sambas. He got the job. Bartholomew hasn’t mentioned it since. I’m taking that as defeat.
