Bring your table manners
How should a candidate behave during a job interview that involves having lunch with the employer?
VCU’s Career Center will try to answer this question through a three-day business-etiquette seminar that opens Tuesday. The 2005 Spring Career Development Conference in the University Student Commons will feature business experts, who will share lunchtime with students.
How should a candidate behave during a job interview that involves having lunch with the employer?
VCU’s Career Center will try to answer this question through a three-day business-etiquette seminar that opens Tuesday. The 2005 Spring Career Development Conference in the University Student Commons will feature business experts, who will share lunchtime with students.
The conference’s second day offers students a typical career fair having a similar theme with food served while potential employers interview students.
“We want to make sure that students understand that in any situation when you talk with an employer you are being judged on different things,” said Susan Story, director of the center. “If an employer takes you out for lunch, it is not just a time for lunch. You have to be sure that you are doing everything correctly.
“People don’t understand that when you are being taken out to lunch, you are still being interviewed. It is not a time to order a cocktail,” Story.
Chris Lee, a fourth-year mechanical-engineering student, said liked the theme of the seminar, while John Girard, a third-year business-marketing student, said learning business-dining etiquette would help him become more prepared and confident.
Fair organizers said students would get a chance to apply the skills on Friday that they learned at the etiquette seminar. Besides catering, for instance, plans are underway for students and business representatives to sit around banquet-style roundtables at the fair to “allow more communication and more networking,” said Shajuana Payne, the fair coordinator.
Payne said business representatives in the spring mainly look for co-op and internship candidates. This year she said the center expects about 850 students to attend the conference.
To participate students must dress professionally and register for a one-hour time block.
“I think it would attract a lot of people,” said Emily Hanisch, a second-year criminal-justice student. “I think people wouldn’t come just for food.”
Hanisch called business-dining etiquette “a valuable skill” that most people overlook when applying for jobs.
