First Impressions: Dress, Presence and the Introduction

A first impression forms before you speak. In the first few minutes people read your clothes, posture, eye contact and pace all at once, and once that reading settles it takes repeated contact to revise. It does not decide your ceiling, but it decides how much patience you get.

1. Dress: half a step up, never above the room

One rule covers almost everything: dress half a step more formal than the daily norm for the role — but never more formal than your interviewer or your manager.

Baselines by industry:

• Finance, law, consulting, government affairs — full business dress. Interviews: no exceptions.
• Tech — business casual. A shirt or plain knit, clean trousers, clean shoes. A blazer is fine; a tie is usually not needed.
• Creative and design — neat, with room for personal style, but nothing loud enough to compete with your portfolio.
• Labs, plants, clinical settings — safety and site rules override every style consideration.

Three checks that apply everywhere: clean, pressed, and the right size. A well-fitting inexpensive jacket reads better than an expensive one with collapsed shoulders. Beyond that: clean shoes (the one thing people forget and interviewers do look at), fragrance kept close-range in shared rooms, and tidy nails, hair and glasses.

The same applies on video. Dress the top half as you would in person — a blazer over sleepwear stops working the moment you stand up.

2. Presence: steady beats textbook

Nobody measures your posture, but everyone senses whether you are settled.

• Standing — feet shoulder-width, weight even, no leaning on walls, no bouncing knee, no hands in pockets.
• Sitting — use about two-thirds of the seat, back slightly off the chair, hands resting on the table or your lap. Neither slumped nor rigid.
• Hands — gestures stay between chest and waist and inside shoulder width. When nervous, rest them lightly on the table rather than clicking a pen or shredding a napkin.
• Eye contact — look at the triangle between the eyes and the bridge of the nose, three to five seconds at a time, then break naturally. In a group, rotate across everyone as you speak. Constant staring and constant avoidance are equally uncomfortable.
• Pace — nerves speed you up. Pausing for half a beat at each full stop is the simplest correction there is.

3. A thirty-second introduction

The goal is not to recite your resume. It is to leave people with one memorable thing and an obvious next question.

Structure: who you are + one representative thing you did + why it connects to this room.

• Interview — "I'm Li Zhe. For the past two years I've worked on user growth at X, mostly on new-user activation — we took first-week retention from about 20% to just over 30%. This role looks focused on post-acquisition conversion, which is exactly what I've been doing."
• Day one, meeting another team — "Hi, I'm Li Zhe, new on the data team, working on the business dashboards. I did growth analytics before, so if you ever have questions about metric definitions, come find me."
• Industry event — "I'm Li Zhe, I work on growth at X. I mostly came to hear how people are handling activation in a saturated market — we're stuck on exactly that right now."

Three reusable techniques:

1. Give a handle. A number, a project, an open problem — anything concrete beats "I'm a fast learner and a people person."
2. Keep it under three sentences. Longer and attention drifts; shorter and you said nothing.
3. Land on them. Close on the connection to the role, the help you can offer, or the question you want to ask. An introduction is an opening, not a closing argument.

4. Handshakes and first contact

• In East Asian settings, the host, the senior person or the elder offers a hand first; don't beat your manager to it. In the US and Europe it is far looser — either party can initiate.
• Firm but not crushing, web of the thumb meeting theirs, one or two pumps, two to three seconds.
• A limp fingertip grip and a knuckle-grinder are equally memorable, in the wrong way.
• Dry your palm on the way in if you need to.
• Many people have simply stopped shaking hands. If they nod, nod back — never leave a hand hanging.

Common mistakes

• Wearing something brand-new to an interview. Anything that pinches or itches steals attention you need elsewhere. Do a trial run.
• Memorizing the introduction word for word. A recited script always sounds recited. Learn the structure, not the sentences.
• Overdoing enthusiasm. Too loud, too many nods, too much smiling reads as unsteady.
• Ignoring the people who aren't deciding. The assistant who greeted you and the person seated beside you often have a voice. Same standard for everyone.

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One line to remember: the goal of dress is to not be noticed; the goal of your introduction is to be remembered for one thing.