Outfit of the Day: Bows on Bows

May 2 by letsbepreppy featuring leather tote bags

So last week, I started my internship! I am so excited to be working in an awesome environment very conducive to getting meaningful work done!

Monday-Thursday is business casual, no suits or anything. Personally, I think "business casual" is the most difficult dress code to stick to. You don't want to stand out by dressing up TOO much (read: I wore a suit blazer and structured dress to my interview...oops! Better to overdress and overprepare!) or look sloppy by being underdressed! 

I think for girls especially, the "business casual" line is tough. I wore this knit Target dress for my first day and it was appropriate for the office. It's a great length, and was one of those dresses I was iffy about in the store, but looking back, I'm SO glad I bought it! I added that black ruffle cardigan, BCBG bow wedges (that actually gave me about 4 blisters per foot...yikes!), and my Kate Spade bow earrings that my sister gave me as a Christmas gift a few years ago! 

I was asked to start posting more OOTD's, so I'll try to post more of my internship outfits! Our Fridays are casual Fridays and everyone wears jeans. In the marketing and communications departments, where I work in between, the ladies all dress up the casual a little with fun tops and cardigans. It's the perfect blend of casual and professional for a workplace!

I'm PUMPED and can't wait to share more about my internship as I work more! Here's to getting my feet wet in the "real world"!!

xxKatie

About.Me

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Social media, ways to connect, ways to build your brand, all of the above?

Ever question how to keep it all organized? Sometimes it's really hard. Actually, most of the time it's really hard. You phone can have about 90% of these apps if not 100% of them. I have a bookmarks bar chock full of all these different websites/applications that I maintain on an almost daily basis. Ask anyone with their own website, and I'm sure they'll say the same thing. We all have our own ways of staying organized, however, I've found a great new website to keep everything all together! Good news!!

Introducing About.Me! 

Imagine combining all your different webpages into one personal map!

About.Me keeps track of all your different applications that you might use to promote your blog, website, self, etc. It's s clean website that you can customize as much as you'd like! You can upload photos, change fonts, edit colors, and of course, showcase your social media prowess! I organized mine yesterday into what you see here. I crafted mine to be partly a resume (or similar to my resume in my bio), and partly an organization of social media. 

It would be really easy to list this as a website on a resume for a potential company to visit and see your social media exposure! You also can tailor it to exactly what you want people to see. For instance, there's no need for people to see my personal facebook page, so instead I linked mine to my facebook fan page instead! You can alter almost everything on your page...pretty cool! I encourage anyone who's spread their social media networks out online to take advantage of About.Me!

xxKatie

Interview Attire Do's and Don't's

In the spirit of recruitment for one of the student organizations that I'm in, I figured I would post about what's appropriate to wear to an interview. We're holding second round interviews for students who moved past the forum round to a panel round. Last night I worked the check-in desk and so we saw everyone the minute they walked in. One girl had a black, cotton/spandex blend, short tight skirt:

It was so wildly inappropriate for the interview or even anything remotely close to an interview. She wore it with a pink top and a white sweater on top. My friend Laura remarked that people think black and white automatically means appropriate. And usually, I'd say that that holds true, but this girl had it SO wrong. She had to tug on this skirt so that it would stay down. That should have been her red flag #1.

We also had an applicant come in wearing a black Polo t-shirt, garnet skirt and Target flats. She looked cute for her outfit, but it wasn't dressy enough for an interview of this caliber. She even admitted to mixing dressy and Carolina, but this time unfortunately it didn't completely work. It's always better to be overdressed than underdressed in my book.

I clearly remember one girl and how cute she looked. She wore a super cute houndstooth skirt that was similar to the one above, but was grey and black instead of white and black. She wore a cute cotton top that was the same shade of grey, a cropped black blazer, a cute necklace and very basic black flats. She was fun and peppy and I really hope she makes it! Her look was so classic and clean though, and she did a great job of looking appropriate without looking stuffy.

Another candidate was wearing a blue shift that had some white beading, she added a white cropped cardigan and wore Jack Rogers. I liked her outfit, but it was generally on the more casual side of things. There were definitely more dressed up people and less dressed up people. 

I always enjoy the people watching (now that I'm on the easy other side) element of things like this. It's clear that some college students know how to dress for events like this and that others still have some learning to do. Professional dress always means such different things to different people too which is also interesting to point out. Sometimes it means heels and sometimes it doesn't, where the line is drawn isn't always easy, so I don't mean to complain about everyone and I understand that often times it is unclear. I wish the best of luck to anyone who has upcoming interviews!

What do you wear to interviews? Have any go-to pieces? Is being overdressed better than underdressed?

xxKatie