Polished Professional Image Blog

Over the holidays, I was speaking with an associate with whom I had not spoken in a while. She asked what I had been up to since we last spoke. Of course, I told her about Polished Professional Image and gave her a brief description of the services and mission.

Her response astounded me! She said that she doesn’t need to concern herself with her professional image because she does not want to “get into management”.  It wasn’t that she does not aspire to a managerial position that astounded me – management is not for everyone – it was that she thought that a professional image was needed only from those in management. She did not know that her image would have an impact on her raises and promotions.

According to a survey conducted by CareerBuilder.com, 75% of American workers say that clothing or personal appearances influence attitudes about professionalism. In fact, in the first 3 seconds of a person meeting you, they have made judgments about your profession, education, income, intelligence and personality! And they base these judgments on the way you dress, speak and carry yourself.  If your image gives the impression that you do not care about your job (and not caring about your image can result in that impression – right or wrong), your raises and promotions will suffer.

If you have been working your tushie off and your raises and promotions are not reflective of all of that hard work, check your professional image. If your co-workers get invited to sit in on key meetings with key management and you are asked to cover the phones, check your image. Don’t just tell yourself that business is slow or you “hate those meetings anyway”. Check your image. A professional image is not just for management.     

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Image. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.