When you meet a person for the first time, your appearance, body language, and the way you introduce yourself.
The Effect of Our Appearance
As light travels with higher speed than sound does, we are seen before we are heard. For this reason, before you even introduce yourself, your personal appearance says a lot about you as an individual. We are all affected by each other's appearance, even if we do not realize it, and even if we are convinced that appearance is not important. Simple words, a person's visual presentation has certain consequences.
Have you ever heard about the "halo effect?" That means that if you know something positive about someone, you will likely have a generally positive impression of that person. The halo effect extends to the personal appearance as well. For this reason, a positive first impression has a great meaning.
If you are looking for a job, it is important to know that often employers are highly irritated by inappropriate clothing, murmuring, and even poor handshakes by job applicants during interviews.
Below, you will find good pieces of advice for employers and employees on how to make a good impression.
What Employers Can Do
- Decide whether casual dress is appropriate for your company. It was found that casual clothing usually leads to relaxed manners, morals, and reduced productivity. So it is necessary to make an informed decision about the dress code in your company.
- Create policies. Employees are sometimes confused about the dress expectations at work. They would like to get compliments from their colleagues, but they might be afraid of looking unprofessionally. Such mixed signals may cause misunderstandings. Provide precise dress guidelines for all the employees and be ready to provide consequences for those ones who do not follow the company's policy.
- Organize professional etiquette and appearance training. Provide your employees with a seminar if do not have basic knowledge in this field and strengthen the dress code policy. This way, you will help them know how to make a good impression on other people.
- Organize sexual harassment training. Provocative clothing often leads to flirtatious behavior and increased sexual harassment complaints. If you do not organize a professional training, you risk receiving costly lawsuits, losing employee morale, reducing productivity, and damaging a company's public image.
- Make sure that the leaders set an example for other employees. When leaders do not fit your company's image, other employees lose motivation. Organize special trainings for company leaders.
What Employees Can Do
- Dress appropriately. When you dress to fit your profession, you feel like you belong to the team and corporate culture. Therefore, you can concentrate on your job better. Besides, it demonstrates that you understand and respect the company's dress code. It is one of the effective ways to make a good impression. Make sure you are consistent and meet your employer's expectations.
- Pay special attention to colors. According to the research, color is a strong communicative instrument which has an emotional effect on the wearer and the observer as well. The color of your dress can affect your behavior and perception. To take a full advantage of this knowledge, find out what your best colors are, considering your eye and hair color and your unique undertone.
- Choose clothes according to your body type. Determine which outfit better fits your shape and try to choose dresses accordingly. Avoid clothes which are too big or small for you as it makes you look unkempt.
- Buy qualitative clothes. When you wear a cheap dress, you might feel uncomfortable, and the viewer can see it. That means you should build a wardrobe with quality rather than quantity. Such outfits will serve you longer and therefore, work out cheaper.
- Do not forget about finesse. Strive to maintain flawless grooming habits. Exclude any body and food odors, overdone makeup, greasy hair, etc. Always pay attention to detail, demonstrating that you care about each component of the entire picture to make a good impression.
- Dress into the current century. Forget about all those acid colored shirts, loud or babyish prints and platforms. Make sure your wardrobe is kept up-to-date.
- Dress for the job you want. When you"look the part," you increase self-confidence and credibility of your intended message of where you would like to go. A good idea is mirroring the image of someone whose position you want to be at. Dress for a position you want to be, instead of where you are.
- Do not hesitate to ask for help. For example, if you are a fresh graduate, then transitioning from your school wardrobe to the corporate one can be quite challenging. Ask your organization whether they provide professional dress training and take advantage of it. If they do not, hire a specialist as when you feel you look good, you feel confident and others can feel it.
Whether you are an employee or an employer, a first impression is very important. To get to more intuitive communication, begin with understanding appearance psychology. This will help you achieve professional and personal success.