I was 22 years old when I went to an interview wearing a freshly pressed pantsuit and a pair of open-toed heels.
The shoes weren’t my first choice. They were what I had. I was young, starting my career, with student loan debt, and didn’t have the money to buy a new pair of shoes just for an interview. So I made do with what I had.
Fortunately, I got the job and started an amazing career. Sometime later, though, I learned that after I left the interview, some people on the search committee questioned how professional I would be because of my shoes.
The irony? Those same people eventually became some of my closest colleagues. They got to know me, saw what I could do, and came to understand the value I brought to the organization.
Their perception changed when they had more information.
This is one reason first impressions are both powerful and imperfect. We naturally use shortcuts to make sense of people, particularly when we have limited information. In psychology, this is related to the halo effect and other forms of cognitive bias: a single characteristic can disproportionately influence how we perceive the whole person.
So in the case of my interview experience, the shoes became information about me. But they weren’t actually information about my work ethic, creativity, intelligence, leadership potential, or ability to contribute. They were just shoes.
I think about this whenever I’m tempted to make a quick judgment about someone else—and whenever I worry about someone making one about me.
We will all be evaluated based on things that have little to do with our actual capabilities. Sometimes we can influence those perceptions. Sometimes we can’t. The important thing is not to confuse being perceived a certain way with actually being that way.
And when we are the ones doing the perceiving?
Pause. Ask what you actually know.
There may be a whole person hiding behind the shoes.