Professional Presence

The topic on Professional Presence had taught me many interesting things like what to wear during different occasions. For example, there is a difference in the attire for different occasions. Especially when we go out to the working world, there will bound to have company functions like Dinner & Dance (D&D). If we were to wear the wrong attire, we will not look professional and it will be quite embarrassing.

We also learnt about meetings and greetings and what to do during the first encounter with people, be it a client, or somebody or higher seniority than you. I was actually surprised that we have to take note of who to introduce first when we introduce one to another party. After the workshop that day, I tried to take note how people introduce one another during initial meetings and I am shocked that they even followed this in TV dramas!

'You never get a second chance to make a first impression' (John W. Weikert May, 1994). This quote shows how important a first impression is especially if the other party is someone that have an impact on your life, like during job interviews. The comic above shows how important first impression is, and one of the ways is to know when and where to answer phone calls. Not only during job interviews, but during business meetings, which is also covered in the tutorial itself.

The class activity that I enjoyed the most was whereby we have to make small talk with people whom we are not familiar with, in front of the class. As an audience, when I see groups going up to ‘make small talk’, it seemed easy as I thought that it is only plain talking. However, when it was my turn, I made the same mistake too and sometimes the three of us would just run out of topics to talk about. It was a fun activity that left me wanting to practise it with my friends even after the tutorials!