job fair: dress code

[will]

Hi,

First, thank you to everyone who posts here. I have been lurking for the past few months and have gotten a lot of great information from the posts and replies.

I’m a manager (formerly a sysadmin) at a large Silicon Valley internet company and am looking at many of the technical and technical management jobs in Antarctica listed on the RayJobs site. I’m going to attend the RPSC job fair in Denver this coming Friday (April 13th), but I’m not sure how formally job applicants are expected to dress, and I don’t want to either over- or under-dress. My usual office attire would qualify as business casual if you stretched the definition quite a bit 🙂

Does it vary by the type of job one is applying for? For jobs like I mentioned above, does anyone who has been to the job fair in the past have any recommendations? Business casual? Suit and tie?

I’d be very greatful for any comments or suggestions on this or anything else related to the job fair and technical jobs in Antarctica.

Thanks,
Aelfric

[MightyAtlas]

Aelfric —
 
RPSC is a pretty casual company.  On the ice, everyone wears jeans.  Heck, in the Denver office, nearly everyone wears jeans, too.  However, the Job Fair is when everyone dresses to impress.  You’ll be fine with slacks, shirt, and tie (oh yeah, shoes, too).  If you want to wear a jacket, too, no problem.
 
Have plenty of resumes printed up, and make it a point to jot down the hiring manager’s name, so you can send a thank-you note after the event.
 
During the Austral Summers on the ice, there’s typically 1-2 Network Engineers, a NetAdmin, and maybe 3-4 SysAdmins.  Want to be a manager?  Sorry, you’ll need to work up the chain.  Nothing worse than having a FNG for a boss.  (If you don’t know what a FNG is, ask someone at the Job Fair.)
 
The thing most managers are looking for is an open personality, previous experience it remote areas (like Alaska, Montana, the UP of Michigan, and Kansas), the ability to be totally flexible (things can, and will, change…multiple times), and the ability to tolerate a psuedo-corporate atmosphere on the world’s most remote continent (we live for Hawaiian shirt Thursdays).
 
Good luck, Aelfric!  Have fun.  It’s a great adventure.
 
atlas

[will]

Atlas,

Thank you for the quick reply and for the advice. Understood on working up the chain, and that actually sounds like a pretty good policy even though it reduces the number of jobs I can apply for. And yeah, I was an Army brat, so I know what a FNG is — they use that terminology, too 🙂

I’ve travelled to a lot of remote places (like Mongolia, Tibet, and Antarctica, though only as a tourist), but my only work experience outside the US was a year in Taiwan. I hope the travel experience will help to show flexibility.

Thanks again for the advice, and I hope I make it 🙂

Thanks,
Aelfric

[thepooles98]

I’ll echo Atlas,
Minimum, casual very nice. No sloppy clothing although you will see that in the trades jobs. Coat and tie people get hired as well. It’s all how you present yourself. Once on the ice you will only wear a suitcoat at xmas dinner, if at all.
Mike

[Author]

Posts