Recap of 3/18 Mentoring Event

The theme of today's session with Morris Academy was on etiquette and manners. This is a seemingly mundane topic, but mastery is generally the product of knowing one's environment. Greg and I led a session on etiquette and manners in a professional setting. Greg works at major ad agency on the creative side, while I work in the finance field. Call it Madison Avenue meets Wall Street. While both of us work in an office setting, it is clear that the presentation of oneself would differ between the two. The one point we wanted to get through to the students was to "know your audience". In getting a job, the goal for the applicant is to give him/herself every opportunity to get noticed. Reiterate that an interview is your opportunity to sell yourself.

The primary steps that we discussed in each session were:
1. Punctuality (you're early, you're on-time. You're on-time, you're late. You're late, see ya later)
2. Presentation (dress, greeting, language, confidence)
3. Follow-up (thank you notes and follow-up in general keeps you top-of-mind in an interview)

One interesting question that came up during our discussion group was the following: What proportion is presentation versus substance? Please comment if you have some opinions on the matter.

The discussion topics did yield some humorous accounts of past infractions when it came to interpersonal etiquette (so I hear from the other sessions). The story I liked best was one in which one of the mentors recalled getting peed on in a subway car.