The Interview Haircut for Men, Day by Day

The best interview haircut for men is the cut you already wear, done properly, timed to how quickly that cut grows out. For a skin fade, come in two or three days before. For a taper, a short back and sides or a scissor cut with some length on top, four or five days. The one thing to avoid is trying a new style the same week, because there is no time left to fix it if it does not suit you.

When to book an interview haircut, cut by cut

Your hair puts on something like a centimetre every month, so call it a third of a millimetre each day. On a cut with four inches on top that is invisible. On a fade that starts at bare skin, three days is a millimetre of stubble and the contrast you paid for is already going. So the shorter the shortest part of your cut, the closer to the day you want it.

Your cut	Book it	Why	Price here
Skin fade	2 to 3 days before	Bare skin turns to stubble by day three or four	£17, 30 min
Taper fade	4 to 5 days before	No skin to grow back, the blend holds for weeks	£17, 40 min
Short back and sides	4 to 5 days before	Gives the outline time to stop looking freshly clipped	£14, 20 min
Scissor cut, length on top	5 days to a week	Top needs a few washes to fall the way it will	£15, 30 min
Buzz cut (the Crew Cut on our list)	1 to 3 days before	So short that a day or two makes little difference	£10, 20 min
Head shave	The day before	Gives any razor redness a night to calm down	£18, 30 min
Beard trim	3 to 4 days before	A razored cheek line needs a couple of days to soften	£11, or £9 with a cut

Torn between two rows? Go by the shortest part of your head. That decides it.

Do not change the cut the week of the interview

This is the mistake we see most. A man has a big day coming, decides it is time to finally try the textured crop or go from a scissor cut to a skin fade, and books it for two days before. Sometimes it is great. Sometimes the crown sticks up in a way neither of us knew about, because his hair has never been cut that short, and there is no length left to try again.

A new cut needs one full cycle before you trust it: you have to have washed it, slept on it and styled it yourself a few times. If you want a change, do it after the interview, or at least three weeks before it.

The same goes for colour. Box dye the night before is not something any barber can fix in a morning.

If you are halfway through growing it out

Plenty of men are mid grow-out when the interview email lands, usually from a short cut towards something with length on top. You do not have to throw away two months of growth.

Ask for the perimeter only. Tidy over the ears, clean the neckline, take the bulk off the sides so they stop puffing out, and leave the top alone apart from the ends. The awkward stage looks awkward because of the edges, not the length on top, so a clean outline makes it look like a cut you chose. Tell us the cut you are growing towards, and we will keep everything on its way there.

The beard: keep it, tidy it, or take it off

Keep it. An interviewer will not mark down a tidy beard, and a face you have not seen without one for five years is a gamble.

If you do want it gone, shave it at least two days ahead, not that morning. Taking a full beard off with a razor often leaves a day or two of redness along the jaw, and on camera or across a table that shows far more than any beard would. A clean shave with us is £11 and we use a hot towel first, which helps.

If it stays, the parts that matter are the cheek line and the neckline under the jaw. A beard that stops cleanly a finger or two above the Adam's apple looks deliberate. One that fades down into the collar looks like nobody has thought about it.

Video interviews see different things

On a laptop camera nobody sees your neckline, your crown or the back of your head. They see your front hairline, your fringe and the sides above your ears, framed and lit from the front, for an hour.

That changes two things. First, the front matters more than usual. If the fringe sits in your eyes or flops when you look down at your notes, mention the call when you book and we will take it shorter at the front than we normally would. Second, shine. A screen light or a window in front of you picks up every bit of gloss, so a pomade that looks fine in a mirror can read as wet on camera. A matte clay or a cream holds just as well without it, and we covered the difference properly in clay, pomade and wax compared.

Test it the day before. Open the camera at the desk you will use, in the light you will have, and look at it for thirty seconds.

The morning of

Style it the way you have practised, not a new way you saw last night. Use less product than you think, worked through dry hands, so it holds without looking done. If your hair goes flat and flyaway straight after washing, wash it the night before instead.

If you could not get to a barber at all and the back has gone fuzzy, a careful tidy of the neckline is the one bit of home cutting worth risking. The neckline guide shows how to do it without taking it too high.

Say what it is for

When you book, tell the barber it is for an interview and the date. We do not cut a "nice" version of your haircut for the occasion. We cut it so it looks right on that one day: a fade sat a touch lower so the contrast is gentler, the neckline tapered rather than square so it is still clean days later, the top left a little longer if the cut has days to settle. Which cuts read as smart in the first place is covered in our guide to professional haircuts. This post is about getting yours ready for the day.