Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep51: How to make a good first impression.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hi everyone, this is Mei Ping and welcome back to a brand new episode on my Got a Ping podcast, a podcast you should listen to if you are an ambitious corporate professional. So in today's episode, I want to talk about first impressions.

Starting point is 00:00:44 Do they matter? How do you create very strong first impressions and basically how to go about it in a way that it can actually help your professional reputation if you are somebody who is really serious about your corporate career. So now when we think about first impressions, most of the time we think about the first time we ever meet somebody. So in the case of the fact that if you are a job seeker, you might think that your first impression will be during the interview process, which is usually the beginning of a journey if you are a corporate professional. So today I want to share with you a slightly

Starting point is 00:01:26 different perspective and I'd say this, if you are a job seeker, the first impression that you will ever create will likely be in your resume because that is the first point of contact a potential employer will get to know you get to know who you are what you can do and what you can contribute based on what you have written in your resume so if you think that you need to wait until an interview to make a first impression that is not necessarily correct so a lot of times as hiring managers so in the past I was also a former hiring manager at the international bank we do form impressions on candidates and job seekers based on what we see in the resume and of course later on in the interview we will then consolidate that viewpoint also and nowadays the fact that everybody's on social media there's a lot of

Starting point is 00:02:27 things going on digitally professional networking platforms the other place where you can make a really strong first impression actually is via the activities that you do on a lot of these social networking platforms so now i have been been on LinkedIn for a very long time and over the past couple of years I do see this emerging trend of young professionals in particular wanting to gain visibility, wanting to be known, be visible, personal branding, blah, blah, blah. But what they sometimes don't realize, and perhaps, you know, due to lack of knowledge, or just maybe ignorant in general, is that they are actually creating a first impression based on what they say, and what they do on social media.

Starting point is 00:03:26 So if you are that person who says that you are serious about your career, but you are on platforms such as LinkedIn, I don't know, Facebook, Instagram, or maybe a lot of other social media platforms, behaving in a way that is completely different to who you want to present yourself as a professional then whatever impression that is being created whatever first impressions or maybe even lasting impressions that is being created that is really down to you it is your fault if it doesn't go right because you may not realize that whatever that we say and whatever that we say or do online and offline so online professional networking platforms and offline at an interview at the workplace right even networking event events

Starting point is 00:04:26 people people are looking at you and trying to understand who you are as a professional are you a trustworthy person do they see themselves potentially working with you so the impressions are always being set and it rolls on on and on and on so just don't think just because you know your peers and network or i guess your peers friends or colleagues are not on certain platforms you can behave in a way that is different to your professional reputation just recognize this professional reputation online offline is the same thing right so if you're trying to be this you know high value professional offline but online you're going around making ridiculous comments and you know basically provoking and creating random content that don't make sense then don't don't be alarmed when somebody judges that you are that kind of person so always think about the impact of what you say and do for the long term so it might be fun

Starting point is 00:05:40 to leave a ridiculous comment right to say something ridiculous and silly online, but think about it in the long term. Is that actually going to help you? Or that is actually going to create a dent in your professional reputation, which will take you way more time to try to rebuild this reputation that you may have single-handedly destroyed

Starting point is 00:06:07 may not and you may not even realize it right so this is not to say that first impressions cannot be replaced um of course you know there are some people or maybe it's you you may not have made the right first impression due to whatever reason it could be you know you don't you don't have resume writing skills you have poor interview skills you know you you have poor communication skills you you have you know poor people skills and that that happens but recognize that all these again these are skills so skills meaning that you can always improve yourself but the most important thing is to then recognize that there is going to be an impact on your career. So it's much better to create a positive first impression

Starting point is 00:06:52 rather than trying to fix this impression once it is already broken. So if you think about a bowl that is already broken, if you're trying to fix it again, clearly it's going to take more time. It's fix it again clearly it's going to take more time it's not impossible but it's going to take more time versus right at the start setting a really clear intention of what kind of um reputation do you want to have as a professional right nowadays you know there are fancier terms calling it personal branding or whatever but at the end of the day it's very very simple it's down to what is your professional reputation how do you want people to remember you as a professional right you want to remember as

Starting point is 00:07:34 hardworking intelligent insightful creative adaptable whatever those whatever those words are you choose it but just recognize that all the activities that you're doing online and offline will contribute to that. So if you say you want to be one thing, but you're doing something else on the other side, then you are the one who is creating confusion. And maybe I'll give you an example. So if you're a job seeker, you say that you want certain kind of roles. You're trying to portray yourself as a serious professional and so forth. But in your resume, it's totally not clear. You don't articulate what makes you the best candidate, right?

Starting point is 00:08:25 And in the interview, you also are unable to explain that because lack of practice, right? Point of view skills, whatever that is, then how can you positively influence that impression? Then you're actually leaving it to the hiring manager, the HR recruiter, whoever else to make to make that impression of you because you didn't actively take charge of how you want to portray yourself and how you want other people to see you as you know as this profession that you say you are right

Starting point is 00:08:59 and if you're currently in a full-time job and um as I know, a lot of working professionals, they do struggle at work quite a bit. And based on the comments I hear from my clients and my students, a lot of them tend to complain that it's not fair, their bosses and their colleagues don't recognize their effort. And, you know, they don't recognize that I'm this or that kind of person. So the more important question I leave you with, right, in today's podcast episode is, what are you actually doing that potentially could be creating that impression? What are you doing that is creating that impression, positive or negative, right? Positive or negative, what are you actually doing that is potentially creating that impression that people are looking at you in a certain way judging you in a certain

Starting point is 00:09:52 way so my point here is this let's try to meet halfway while it's a lot easier to you know always complain that oh yeah you know this person you know it's not fair, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But sometimes, right, self-reflection matters also. Potentially, there could be something that we are doing that is creating this kind of impression. So the faster that you can identify what is this thing that you are doing, then the faster that you can actually fix it and eventually improve your work performance or even improve your job search success right so i leave you guys for

Starting point is 00:10:27 this episode to really ponder on what are you actually doing that is influencing that first or lasting impression that's actually being created so have a think about it when you go for your when you go to work next week or when you're in the process of updating your resume or even interview and more importantly at your workplace. So I leave you guys with this talk to ponder in this week's episode and I'll see you guys next week.

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep51: How to make a good first impression.

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