Etiquette training an advantage in job hunting
Hanah Cho

Shake a job recruiter's or client's hand with a firm grip and maintain eye contact. Write an e-mail like a business correspondence and not as a text message to friends. Wait until the host begins eating before picking up a fork.

These tips sound like lessons out of charm school. But college students are signing up for etiquette instruction with more frequency because a growing number of schools are providing the training to better prepare their graduates for the workplace.

Employers now expect graduates to be equipped with technical know-how, the rules of doing business and proper etiquette right out of school, according to college career advisers and etiquette consultants. That's partly because companies have less time and resources to train young hires on the finer points of protocol compared with past generations, business and education leaders say.

Globalisation also has fueled the need for students to be more aware of cultural nuances and international etiquette. And increasingly, younger workers have become accustomed to casual manners and informality, partly fueled by their everyday use of technology.

“The workplace is now 24/7, and students are presumed to arrive at their first day on the job with advance knowledge of how everything is going to work, including what I call the unwritten rules of communication, such as basics on etiquette,” says Dede Bartlett, a former executive at two Fortune 500 companies who lectures on career issues to college students.

On top of workshops in resume writing and interview techniques, colleges are adding etiquette training because the job market demands it more now than in the past. “That's part of our jobs to prepare them even though it's not the book stuff,” says Laleh Malek, director of professional experience. “We are moving with those changes.”

At some universities, officials have held campus-wide events on networking and dressing for the workplace. This semester, a business school also held a separate networking workshop, where local recruiters evaluated students' skills on handshaking and making eye contact and gave pointers on proper way to follow up with e-mail, phone calls or notes.

Malek says the business school is looking into holding a mock business dinner, an increasingly popular way to teach students table manners.

In part, the demand for table-etiquette training has been driven by changes in eating patterns, say etiquette consultants and college career specialists. Many families no longer sit down for meals, opting to eat on the go, they say.

“As we've gotten to a culture where a lot of (dining) is fast food, how many times do you sit down at a table with a place setting?'' says Maureen Casey Gernert, director of a Career Development Center, which recently held its second annual dining etiquette programme.

Besides learning which utensils to use or the proper way to eat soup or peas, many dining events cover other issues, such as how to make small talk, network and dress for the job.

Earlier, employers used to invest in their young hires and instill the proper skills to succeed on the job, Qubein says. In return, companies got loyalty from their workers. Today, the cycle of rotating doors demands that companies find skilled workers who can perform quickly.

“We live in a very demanding global environment, which is competitive and impatient,” he says. “Therefore, you take the average CEO of a company, she or he is not thinking 10 years down the road, he's thinking the next quarter. They're all asking the same question, `What kind of people do I need on my team to give me the edge?’”

As a consequence, etiquette and other types of soft-skills business training have fallen to colleges because employers expect more and there is less instruction at home, consultants and education leaders say. International business and competition abroad also are prompting colleges to train students, says Jeanette S. Martin, associate professor of management and co-author of ‘Global Business Etiquette’. “Etiquette …has been down in general,'' she says. “Parents are not teaching as much etiquette as they used to.”

In most cases, not using the right fork, for instance, will not make or break a job interview, but bad etiquette can raise red flags about the person's ability to interact with future business associates and clients, consultants say.

“Bad etiquette will boot you out of the (hiring) decision-making process, rather than good etiquette bringing you in,'' says Ray Ruiz, a director of recruiting who interviews up to 300 Baltimore-area students a year and expects young job candidates to have basic knowledge of business etiquette.

“A candidate or a first-year associate may be responsible for interviewing a manager of a warehouse of one of our clients, or may be responsible for sitting in a meeting with a CEO or CFO,'' Ruiz says. “If they don't have good business etiquette or good means of presenting themselves, then they will be more of a liability to the firm as opposed to someone who could help in those meetings.”

At a dining etiquette event this month, nearly 50 neatly dressed students followed along as etiquette trainer Carol Campbell Haislip explained pointers on business dining. Topics include such things as how to properly hold utensils, the best way to eat bread and how to take unwanted food out of your mouth.

“You only have three to four seconds to make an impression,” Haislip, director of the International School of Protocol, told the students. “We make assumptions based on how people dress, how they handle themselves.”

Jessie Merryman, 21, a senior who's job hunting, picked up a few tips and got the message of the night. “If I can fine-tune my manners, then I'll be able to give off a better first impression that could put me above someone else if we're at the same level.”

LA Times-Washington Post