How (And Why) To Look Your Best On Virtual Calls
You guys might think I am at least a day late and more than a few dollars short with this article.
After all, many of us have been working remotely for over five years at this point. Surely, we have all comfortably settled into our “remote work” personas (as in, the facsimile of our true selves that we present on work calls when we need to be “cameras on”). And those personas seem to be working just fine, right?
True, there is no shortage of articles on how to look your best when on a Zoom/Slack/Teams/Skype call. But many of those articles were written when the pandemic first started and remote work was new to us all. It was uncharted territory and therefore a perfect subject for bloggers and menswear sites.
But there is a reason why I chose to wait a while before I wrote my own article on this subject.
Before remote work became a real widespread thing back in the spring of 2020, not many of us (even those of us who like dressing well) really gave much thought to how we looked on our little laptop cameras. It never really mattered all that much. Once we all knew that remote work was here to stay, however, looking presentable while working from home was suddenly a concern.
In the early stages of the pandemic, everyone was scrambling around trying to make their WFH lives work smoothly. Many of us worked from our beds, as we didn’t have home offices. Some of us also lived in small apartments that weren’t conducive for containing two working adults and rambunctious children.
But then we all settled into our new “normal”. After a little while, it became an expectation that employees would have a separate work space.
That was when all those articles came out about how to look good on your video calls. And for a little while, people put in a bit of effort.
But that was then. If you’re not “into” menswear and you were only “dressing up” because you needed to physically go into an office, before the pandemic, you probably didn’t continue to dress business casually for the last five years if someone wasn’t making you do it.
Remote work has been commonplace for so long at this point that many people have forgotten the importance of looking good on their cameras.
The reason why I chose to write this article now instead of then is because I want to stress the “WHY” as much as the “how”.
Why is important to dress well when you’re on your work video calls? Easy. Because it’s low-hanging professional fruit.
What do I mean by that?
Well, five years ago, remote work was new. It was novel. Now it’s common. Some employees ONLY know remote work and have never had to go into an office. They have spent the past half-decade wearing t-shirts every day. There is no dress code. I’m sure we all see employees, even high-level employees, in t-shirts and baseball caps when we turn on our cameras for team meetings.
What I’m trying to say is that the bar is very low. And a low bar is an opportunity! An opportunity for you to make a positive impact! What remote work has done is make it that much easier to make a good impression with your clothes. Gone are the days when everyone was in the same generic, corporate uniform and in order to set yourself apart you had to wear a jacket or tie. Now, you can easily be the best-dressed guy on the call simply by wearing a collared shirt. And what does being well-dressed convey to your bosses? Maturity and capability.
Most guys looked at remote work and said to themselves, “Great! Now I don’t have to get dressed up anymore!”
What YOU should say to yourself is, “Great! Most guys are going to stop dressing up. Here’s my chance to set myself apart!”
Remote work is a great opportunity to use your knowledge of menswear to advance your career. Because you know most of the other guys at your company aren’t take advantage of it!
Don’t get swept up with all the other dudes who look at remote work as an opportunity to slack off, sartorially.
OK, so we’ve covered the “why”. Let’s get into the “how”…
In my opinion, the most overlooked aspect of looking good on a video call is CONTRAST.
First of all, it’s always a good idea to have an artificial background for when you’re on camera. No matter how nice your home office looks, it will always look drab over Zoom or Teams and that might negatively influence the people you’re speaking with on your meeting.
Instead, utilize either the stock backgrounds your software has, or use the company-branded backgrounds that I am sure are available to you through your job. Using these backgrounds will allow you to work from the car, coffee shop, back porch, or anywhere else you please without people questioning you. They allow for flexibility.
When it comes to how you look, the goal is to create the aforementioned contrast. In order to “pop” on the screen, you need to wear something that differs from your background.
If the background you’re using is light-colored, it’s best to wear something dark over your shoulders like a jacket or sweater coupled with a light-colored shirt. This can take the form of a navy blazer over a white oxford-shirt or a grey cardigan over a white polo. Even a v-neck sweater over a light-colored oxford shirt will provide enough contrast around your neck and shoulder area.
If your background is dark, then a light-colored shirt is all you need. In the summer, do an oxford shirt, polo, or linen shirt. During the fall and winter, chunky, Aran sweaters are an excellent choice.
For these purposes, both white and light-blue shirts will have the same effect, as the differences in hue will be almost impossible for others to discern, given the fuzziness in appearance of the images from most laptop cameras.
The concept of contrast creating a pleasing visual image shouldn’t be a foreign one to you. After all, that’s largely why classic suit-shirt-tie combinations usually consist of DARK suit plus LIGHT shirt plus DARK tie.
And while I certainly advocate for dressing well all the time, it’s totally ok to simply have a presentable shirt at the ready, like hanging in your closet, in case you need to flip your camera on unexpectedly. Do you HAVE to do it? Probably not. But it’s that little bit of effort that’s going to set you apart from your coworkers.
Some guys might feel a little uncomfortable being well-dressed on camera. After all, that means that their coworkers might think they are dressed like that all the time at home!
The horror!
But dressing well on camera is actually much more “low-stakes” than trying to dress well if you go into an office. A lot of guys who want to up their style game feel self-conscious because they know their coworkers will immediately notice if their style changes. It’s hard to experiment and try new things under the gaze and possible judgement of others. But that’s what happens when you need to be out and about in the real world.
Being on camera offers the opportunity to experiment without much risk. You’re only on camera for an hour or so, and the image of you that your coworkers see is only a few inches tall. So, if you wear something a little outside your normal sartorial wheelhouse, it won’t stick in the minds of your coworkers as much as if you were physically sitting next to them all day in an actual office.
So, view remote work as a great opportunity to set yourself apart from your coworkers. Think about it this way… if all of a sudden all of your coworkers collectively decided to turn in really crappy work and miss deadlines, would you go along with them? Or would you think of it as a great chance to go above and beyond and impress your bosses? Even a little bit of effort would go a long way considering the low bar your coworkers have set.
That sounds great to me! And you should look at it the same way.
