5 things to refresh (or learn) before going to a fashion job interview with a fashion company

Did you know that only 2% of the applicants make it to the job interview? 

In fashion, 500 people on average apply for the same job, this means that only 10 people get to the job interview and only 1 at the end gets the job. 

If you manage to get a job interview, it is an enormous achievement you should be very proud of. The hardest part of the job search is indeed getting to this stage.

But what happens once you get to the job interview? You’re super close to getting the job. So, you may feel relieved and think you got the job in your pocket. However, there are still other people who got the interview like you. So, you are still in the application process competing with on average other 10 candidates. So how can you stand out at the job interview so you can land your dream fashion job? 

What to expect at a fashion job interview?

First, let’s see what you should expect from recruiters on the job interview day.

Not all the interviews are the same. For internships and entry-level positions, some companies will just have one round of interviews that are more generic to talk about you and your motivation to get this position. 

However, some companies, especially the most prestigious ones might do more rounds of interviews even just for an internship, to go a bit deeper and ask you more than just why you want this job. It happened to me when I went to a job interview with YNAP and AMQ for my eCommerce internship. I had 2 rounds of job interviews.

The hard part is, that fashion companies are not going to tell you in advance what you should expect from a job interview. So you don’t know whether it’s going to be just one and more generic. Nonetheless, it can also be a multistep interview process where they want to test you on different things. Therefore, it’s better to be prepared for any scenario. The more prepared you are the more confident you’ll feel and the more chances you’ll have to land the position. 

The final hiring decision is based on two things:

65% of the hiring decision is given by a gut feeling about whether you’ll be a good fit for the company

35% is influenced by how you answer, and what you say and do during the job interview. 

Yes, as you can tell now, most of the time, hiring decisions are made mainly by just a connection between you and the recruiter. If the recruiter can see something special in you, you can get the job. This is the case even though you might be less competent and have less experience than another candidate. That’s why many times, candidates who feel they are 100% qualified for the position are not getting the job. Maybe the recruiter didn’t feel that they were the right one even though they had it all.

The good news is that even if you believe you might lack some skills or experience, you could still get the job if you leave a strong impression and they see you have the potential to grow inside the company. 

So if you have a job interview coming up soon, or if you have applied for many jobs and you want to be prepared when a call will come, these are the 5 things I recommend to refresh (or learn) before going to a job interview with a fashion company. 

5 things to refresh (or learn) before going to a job interview with a fashion company

Research the company

Recruiters want to know if you did your job before going to the job interview aka if you did your research and have learned everything you could find about the brand on Google. By doing this they want to test how much you love and are passionate about the brand. 

Doing the research is important because you cannot just say that you are very passionate about this brand. Someone who is really passionate can also express WHY they love this brand so much. The person can mention specific collections, values, and other facts. 

They also want to know exactly why you want that job. You have read above how many people apply for the same job. So, it’s very easy for them to find someone else who wants that job so badly. They are not looking for someone who is just looking for a job. However, they are looking for a person who really loves the brand and it’s super interested in that specific position.

These are the things you should research about the fashion company:

• The history of the brand
• The brand’s mission and values
• Creative directors through the years
• Who is the CEO
• Who is the manager of your department (search on LinkedIn)
• Product categories sold

It’s very simple to research fashion companies nowadays when all the information is online. All you need to do is visit their website and study it carefully by exploring the different sections. 

You should also get familiar with what the company posts on social media so you can:
1) Stay aware of the latest news and launches
2) See what celebrities and influencers they work with
3) Suggest your own ideas for social media posts and strategies if you apply for a position in the marketing or communication department.

By doing this research on the website and social media accounts, you are prepared to answer questions. Plus, it can spark a conversation with the recruiter. Then, it can lead to creating that connection that makes them want to press the HIRED button.

In addition, I suggest (re)watching the most iconic and recent fashion shows. Be prepared to answer what you think of the latest show and what your favorite collection ever is. 

Bonus points for you if can you visit the brand’s store and analyze it from a professional lens, for example as an aspiring fashion buyer if you apply for this role. Visiting the store can tell you so much about the brand’s aesthetics, strategies, and values toward customers if you look at it in detail. 

Revise your resume and the job description

Although the recruiter already saw your resume and it must have been good if you got invited to the fashion job interview, you should give it a second look. How honest have you been with the skills you added? It’s normal to make your CV look as amazing as possible and that’s okay. But when a job interview is approaching you need to be prepared for an eventual test on any of the skills to demonstrate how proficient you really are. In addition, if your resume mentions any courses and certificates, be ready to show this proof. 

It is also useful to re-read the job description. Needless to say, you cannot ask the recruiter during the job interview what your responsibilities will be. So you need to know them by heart in case the recruiter asks you which tasks you have the most experience with (if any) and which ones you like the most or less. 

Learn Excel

I’ll never forget the morning of my second step of the job interview. After my first round, which was very broad about me (and my non-existent previous experience in fashion), they invited me over for a second round of job interviews. They just mentioned that other people from the team wanted to meet me. So I didn’t prepare for anything more than just refreshing the information about the brand (step 1). Also, I practiced answering the question again: tell us more about yourself. 

Instead, as soon as I entered the room that morning, there was a laptop open waiting for me with an exercise on Excel. They asked me to calculate the sell-through and do other formulas with Excel. I was nervous. I didn’t refresh my Excel formulas as I did not expect it. Luckily, I was quite confident with the program so I passed the test and got that internship. 

Refresh and Learn

So now as a fashion career coach and mentor, I always recommend my students to refresh (or learn) Excel before going to a job interview. People might not know that in an industry such as fashion, they could test you on a tool such as Excel. However, it’s the most used program in the industry so it’s a generic skill everyone needs to know. And not just to analyze sales and numbers but also to organize things: a list of guests to a fashion show, samples that you receive from brands for a photo shoot, and more.

One of the exercises recruiters asked me to do on Excel that morning was not about sales. I had 20 images of fashion products on the Excel sheet and they asked me to order the items according to one logic of my choice. So like I said, even if it’s not to calculate sales, it’s useful to be familiar with the program.  

Want to learn/ feel more confident about Excel applied to the fashion industry? Check out my online course Excel for fashion or watch my free webinar first.

Reinforce the job-specific skills

Besides Excel, there is a range of skills specific to the role you need to know at least at the beginner level. When you apply for an internship or an entry-level job in fashion, the list of requirements is usually not long, and companies don’t expect you to check all the boxes or have super advanced knowledge of a program unless the level is specified. But despite this flexibility, I always recommend start learning the skills you lack or reinforce your knowledge before going to the fashion job interview. 

For example, if you applied for a fashion PR internship and the job description mentions you must know about press releases, but you didn’t study public relations and have never written one, find out what’s a fashion press release and search for examples online.

Or if the job or internship offer mentions InDesign, PowerPoint, CAD, or other common skills to work in fashion, make sure to start studying them, if you haven’t already, before going to your fashion job interview.

Practice the foreign language

Fashion is an international industry. And especially when you work for the biggest companies of the industry, you’ll meet and work with teams from all over the world. So just because your job is based in a specific country doesn’t mean you won’t communicate with people from other offices based all around the world. 

My eCommerce internship was based in Milan but Alexander McQueen is a London-based brand so as an Italian native speaker they wanted to test my English level. The job interview was conducted half in Italian and half in English (yes they asked me some questions in Italian and I was answering in Italian and at some point, they asked me questions in English so I understood I had to answer in English as well and that they were testing if I was able to understand and communicate in this language. 

The number of languages you speak is important in fashion. The more languages you speak – the better. However, 1-2 foreign languages are already great. 

Fluent English is normally requested everywhere, so if you’re a native English speaker you already have a competitive advantage. Other languages might include Italian if you want to work in Italy, French if you want to work in Paris, and Chinese if you want to work in that market. 

I know that learning a new language is not easy. It wasn’t easy at all for me, and I still make mistakes so you can imagine I was making even more years ago when I went to that job interview. The last time I studied English in a course was in high school, and then I continued learning by myself. I downloaded some apps on my smartphone, I’ve been watching videos and movies, listening to podcasts, and reading in English. In the beginning, it was really hard and it took me weeks to read one book, but the more I practiced it the easier it became.

Be careful with what you write on your resume

Not every company will test your language during a job interview. However, it happened to me so just be careful when you write your language level on your resume. I remember I wrote “fluent”, so that’s why they probably wanted to test me – how fluent I really was. Furthermore, my job required me to work every day with the London team. So, it depends on how much you’ll have to use that language in your job. Sometimes it can be useful to know an additional language just in case and in some others instead, like in my case where I had to communicate daily with the London team, you will use that language actively every day. 

To conclude, learning or refreshing these 5 things before going to a job interview with a fashion company will make you more prepared and ready to impress recruiters. Just a last bonus tip: Even though having a sense of style is NOT the n#1 skill to work in fashion, you should still choose your outfit carefully for the job interview depending on the role and the type of company. In this article, we explain what to wear to a fashion job interview and help you choose your perfect look. 

Need more advanced tips on preparing for a fashion job interview and your application in general? I am hosting a free webinar where I share 5 tricks to impress recruiters and break into fashion. You can join it via this link. Follow us on Instagram!