August 28, 2009 – Whitefield Consulting Worldwide.com – Paris, France
Without a doubt, the world and our society are less formal today than years ago. We have dress down business attire; formal business memorandum have been replaced with e-mail and other shorter, less formal business documentation. Technological advancements have created an environment that operates and changes a a very quick pace resulting to less attention being paid to detail and formality. However, despite our more informal world, professionalism should always abound and exist in all business dealings.
Professionalism is very pertinent and important in your job search efforts. Nothing can derail a job search effort faster than the lack of professionalism. And that perceived lack is often inadvertent; it is overlooked due to the nature of the environment in which we exist.
Some examples:
(1) Your on-line presence
Your business social network (e.g., LinkedIn) needs to be professional and formal. The written content should be free of errors (i.e., grammatical, punctuation, capitalization).
If you chose to participate in some the more social sites (e.g., Facebook), watch or monitor what you post, say and disclose. For example, don’t post blogs or pictures of you guzzling beer or of you in your toga party attire.
(2) Your e-mail address
Preferably your e-mail address should be some combination of your first and last name. For example: first name. last name@electronic mail. Avoid cute e-mail names. Also, don’t use others e-mail addresses such as your spouse’s or kid’s.
