Professional Grooming and Business Etiquette

Finally I have arrived home, back to my beloved homeland. Few days ago I have been 'missing in action' due to a family trip to Vietnam.

Yesterday topic was on profressional grooming. As we all know, first impression always matters in most cases, regardless of venues and time - during job interview, in meeting a client, in getting a partner, etc. Although this sounds cruel, the actual fact is that knowing the correct way of grooming is a comparative advantage in order to 'survive' in this realistic world.

The speaker, Ms. Leilanie (or we call her Leila) inspired me by saying: 'You are the greatest asset. Put your time, effort and money into training, grooming, and encouraging your greatest asset'. This saying by Tom Hopkins shows how true it is that one person has the control to him/herself. Why should I say so? Well, for example, to be well-groomed for a job interview, a person (let's call Mr. A), has to invest on time (to learn all the necessary information on how to groom himself, such as what to wear to an interview which appears not too much of an attention-seeker, yet showing your self-confidence), on effort (he needs to get down to the stores and search high and low for a outfit with a reasonable price and feeling comfortable), and money (it always come with a hefty price to invest in a good quality of suit and leather shoes).

The most interesting part of the session is the tudung tying session. I realized that tying tudung is an art as there are several ways of tying it. Although I am not a Malay, I was called upon to be one of the models. This is my first time wearing a tudung. It was really something new to me.

Besides the personal grooming session, we also learnt about dinner table etiquette. From the session I learnt about the do's and dont's which really benefited me a lot. This is because in future I may be an entrepreneur, this means I will be meeting potential clients or venture capitalists. Portraying a good image through proper dinner table etiquette hence become important.

I really enjoyed the whole session on Friday. I am anticipating more interesting activities to enhance my soft skills in facing the world of entrepreneurship.