The Look

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

 

Dates, interviews, presentations, power lunches, high-level meetings--all are affected by some appearance factors. Trying to look your best, making a good first impression as well as making a lasting and professional impression are all important.

Stereotyped with negative images focusing on physical attributes and poor fashion sense, IT people often have to work harder to counter those characterizations. Gone are the days of the Y2K/dotcom elitists who arrogantly showed up at the worksite wearing torn jeans and stained heavy metal band t-shirts--khaki slacks and cotton poplin shirts have now taken over.

Many people firmly believe in the "appearance is everything" factor. Certainly I wouldn't regard two CEOs at a summit meeting in the same way if one decided to show up wearing baggy pants, a clown nose and squirted me with a seltzer bottle, but taken in other directions, the abuses of this practice have been stirring up a number of concerns on how we evaluate each other and how we allow prejudices to influence and even command our decision-making process.

In the News
A "newstainment" piece on NBC's Dateline a little while ago looked at how physical appearance prompted different treatment from strangers. When "normal looking" people needed assistance or requested help, there was a serious difference in how they were treated versus their …

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