Alan Stutts | BLOG | Education Author

Four of the most important business skills you need are writing, speaking to groups, listening, and expressing ideas. Sure, you did these things in college, but you may not have done them in a business-like manner.

Speaking in public can be terrifying. A management or sales career requires you to persuade and motivate with speech. Do you have trouble giving a talk in front of two or more people? What about giving a formal presentation with a slide show? If you have no experience doing either of these things, or your experience was less than satisfactory, look for a workshop, a community college course, or an online course to help you improve in this area. Toastmasters are an organization for people who want to improve their public speaking ability through practice. Find the local chapter and explore this option, too.

Business writing has conventions that are different from academic writing, journalism, or creative writing. As a manager, you need to write letters, reports, performance reviews, job descriptions, and perhaps even articles for the business press. You must use correct grammar and punctuation and choose appropriate words to convey ideas. Take a business writing class in college. If one is not offered or you don’t take it, take a class in writing, grammar, proofreading, report writing, technical writing, and other writing skills available at community colleges, through continuing education programs, using self-study guides, or online.

Listening is a skill that can be learned. You have to listen effectively to customers, to your subordinates, to vendors, and to your manager and other superiors. Good listeners do not spend the time while someone is talking to them figuring out a snappy response or reasons why the person is wrong. They listen to what the person is saying. To ensure they heard correctly, good listeners repeat what they heard back to the person, usually by paraphrasing it. Only after they are certain they understand what was said do they offer a response. Even if you think you are a good listener, get a book on effective listening or find a community college or continuing education course where you can use role playing and other techniques to become a great listener.

Expressing an opinion comes much too easily to some people! The styles in which opinions are expressed vary from one company to the next and even between departments in the same company. Free-ranging, open debate is a style found often in small companies, creative companies, or start-up companies. Large, mature corporations may prefer that the debate occur outside of meetings and limit meetings to stating the conclusions reached. Debate and opinions may be frowned upon at some companies. You have a style of expressing yourself that has worked well for you in previous jobs, but if your new company prefers a very different style - perhaps less boisterous or more formal - you’d better find out what it is and adopt that style.

On your first day, you may spend several hours filling out paperwork in the human resources office. You will need a proof of citizenship or authorization to work in this country. This can be a passport, naturalization papers, voter registration card or other proof. A driver’s license is not sufficient in most cases. Bring your work history information if you have not filled out an application, yet.

Have at least two emergency contact numbers. One should be someone who lives in the same town and can fetch you or accompany you to medical care. It helps if this person has your family telephone numbers, too. If you have a chronic medical condition, ask to have a letter put into your personnel folder that contains information about prescriptions and the names and telephones numbers of your healthcare providers. This information could be crucial if you are not able to give emergency personnel this information.

Now that you have accepted the job offer and scheduled a first day of work, make sure you learn some important company policies that affect how you dress and behave.

What should I wear to work? If the information you were given by the company up to now did not discuss a dress code, call your new manager or the HR office and ask. Even if you had three or four on-site interviews and saw what others were wearing, don’t assume dressing just like them will work. Individual managers may have slightly different standards for dress than others.

In your visits, the employees you saw may have been enjoying a casual dress day, or dressed inn full business suits because they were interviewing candidates. Before you spend money on a new wardrobe, or walk in on your first day and realize you made a big mistake, ask somebody.

If you wore a traditional Western business suit to your interviews, but you prefer to wear the traditional dress or hair styles of your own ethnic or cultural heritage, discuss this with someone before starting work. Religious clothing, such as head coverings for men or women, prayer shawls, and such are likely protected under constitutional protection of freedom of religion. Conservative companies with a strict dress code may balk at your wearing a sari instead of a dress, and you want to know this before you arrive for work and are told you should go home and change.
Skimpy clothing on men or women is rarely appropriate. Bikinis may be the required attire for Olympic female beach volleyball players, but chances are they are not required attire for your job.

Where is my office? Are you sure you even have one? You don’t want to show up with a box of family pictures, art work, and office toys only to discover you are assigned only a locker for personal affects.

What time do I show up? Companies may have all new staff spend their first week shadowing another staff member as part of their orientation or training. The time you are given to arrive on your first day may not be your regular start-time. You don’t want to be surprised at the end of the first week to find out you are actually working the night shift! Find out how you are supposed to record your time and where and when it must be turned in to ensure you get your paycheck.

Where do I eat lunch (or dinner or breakfast)? Hotels and restaurants often provide meals for employees during their shift, but you want to be certain of the arrangement before you show up with no brown bag or lunch money!

What’s the company policy on personal calls or email? Before you share your office telephone number or email address with friends or family, make sure that you understand the protocols. It goes without saying that the office computer is not your computer and you should not be using it for shopping, playing games, or downloading music.

How do I schedule time off? You need to ask if vacation is accrued (earned at a certain number of hours per month) or given in a lump sum. Companies often have policies that prohibit using vacation time during the first three to six months. If you made plans to go to a family reunion or take a vacation before being offered the job, you should negotiate the time off before you accept the position.

What happens if I get sick? Learn the policy for calling in an absence caused by illness. You may be required to provide medical evidence of illness if you are absent for two or more days.

Before you start your new job, however, did you remember to contact all of your networking contacts and let them know of your success? For those contacts that played direct role, such as introducing you to the company that has hired you, consider sending them an appropriate thank you gift or inviting them to dinner. If finances are still a bit tight, make the invitation for the week you get your first paycheck, or invite them for dessert rather than dinner.

Don’t think that having a job and sending a thank-you note allows you to turn your back on the network you built to help get this job. Your network is a career network, not a job hunt network. You will look for other jobs and need these contacts again. And these contacts may need you. One of the greatest ways to show gratitude to anyone is to return the favor; you want to look for ways to help those who helped you.
You continue to build your network throughout your career. Beginning next month, plan to have lunch or drinks with one of your contacts every month, every month! Talk about anything you want at these get-togethers. The goal is to build deep relationships over time so that each of you feels you can turn to the other for support.

Getting a job is hard, as you know well know. You’re relieved that the search is over and excited about starting your new job, but you are also a little nervous. Will they really like me? What are my co-workers like? Do I have the right clothes? Is my boss nice?

If the job you are starting is your first professional job, you probably have questions about how to behave in the “real world.” You know it’s not like college, but you aren’t sure what to expect.

If this new job is a major change in career, then you have to adjust to a new industry as well as a new work culture. For those of you who are veterans of the business industry, this is an exciting step in furthering your career, but it still means a new boss, a new set of co-workers, and a new work environment.

Your resume is a sales tool, not a job application. It can get you interviews, but it cannot get you jobs. A job application is a business form. Everyone who applies for a job at a company may have to fill one out. Everyone who is hired by the company must fill one out.
An application form contains facts organized in structured form which is the same for every person filling it out: name, address, college granting a degree, eligibility to work in the United States, recent employers and why you left those jobs, and so on.

A resume is your opportunity to present yourself in the best possible light. Your resume need not (probably ought not) contain a list of every job you have ever held. You include only those jobs that best demonstrate your experience, skills and achievements in the hospitality industry. You don’t repeat the formal job description of the jobs you held; you explain how you improved operations, increased profits, or achieved record sales levels. You list the year you earned your degree and the college that granted your degree, not the five colleges you went to over 10 years to get that degree.

You’ll never know what a particular company is really like unless you work there. But talking to others who have can produce valuable insights you won’t find in any magazine or database. Start with the people you know and then find people who work at the companies that intrigue you and arrange to meet with them.

Tapping into the Knowledge of Friends and Colleagues

Don’t ignore the wealth of information about the hospitality industry and specific companies that you can glean from friends and colleagues. Ask all of your friends if they or someone they know has worked in the industry and get their impressions of the companies they worked for. If you already work in hospitality, ask your co-workers where else they have worked or what they know bout other hotels or restaurants. They have former colleagues who still work at these companies who may be willing to talk with you.

You should have been writing down the names of managers and other employees as you were doing your company research. If you didn’t, go back to the company records for those companies where you want to interview and find some names. If the original records do not have names, look for the specific property in ReferenceUSA. The listing here will have a telephone number you can call and ask for the name of the general manager, human resources manager, or public relations manager.

If you are a member of a trade association, you may be able to get the names of other local members from a local chapter or the national organization. Students members may also be able to use this resource. If the membership list is not available, call the local chapter and ask if they can refer you to members at the company you are interested in.

Asking for the Interview

With a specific name to work with, it is time to write a request for an informational interview. Don’t call! These are busy people. Even if you are lucky to get through to them, they may find your call an unnecessary interruption in their busy day. A letter lets them decide when to focus on your request.

In your letter, include the following:

Explain who you are (a student, a person thinking of changing jobs).

Mention how you found the person’s name.

State what you are interested in researching, why, and the amount of time it should take for the interview (usually 20 - 30 minutes).

Tell them you will contact them via telephone on a specific date to schedule a time that is convenient for them.

Be sure you call them when you say you will; not following through does not leave an impression of seriousness.

Since the hospitality industry is a large one, it merits coverage in the general business press and larger daily newspapers. The list below includes indexes that are most likely to index periodicals that would have articles on the hospitality industry. You will find one or more of these in any library.

ABI/INFORM: 1985 to present, updated monthly: Indexes significant articles from nearly 800 business and management journals. Abstracts of up to 150 words are included with the citation.

Business Periodicals Index: Monthly with quarterly and annual accumulations: Alphabetically-arranged subject index to approximately 350 periodicals. Good broad coverage of all fields of business.

General Business File ASAP. Provides indexing and abstracting of more than 900 periodicals and full text for 460 titles. It is an excellent source of information on management theories, business law, key industries, mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures, international trade, new technologies, small and emerging companies, marketing and advertising, job-hunting strategies, and banking. It includes indexing of the current year of the Wall Street Journal and the financial section of the New York Times, as well as the current six months of the Asian Wall Street Journal. Company ProFile and Investext Plus are sub files of General Business File ASAP. Covers 1980 to present.

Investext Plus: Use this database to find reports and forecasts prepared by top Wall Street and international brokerage firms. More than 11,000 U.S. and international companies and 53 industries are covered. Covers 1980 to present.

Company ProFile: Provides current company data, in one comprehensive resource, with an emphasis on hard-to-find private company information. Directory information for over 180,000 private and public companies, full text of the press releases from PR Newswire that cover activities in all types of companies, and indexing and abstracting of local business journals are available. Covers 1980 to present. Note: Company ProFile is a subfield of General Business File ASAP.

LexisNexis Academic: Provides full-text information from business magazines, news letters, newspapers, wire services, and other sources on a variety of topics. Some sub files covering business include: Top News, General News Topics, Company News, Industry & Market News, and Company Financial Information.

National Newspaper Index: References to articles published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

New York Times Indexs: Semi-monthly. Cumulated quarterly and annually. Index and summary of the contents of the New York Times. News summaries are arranged alphabetically by subject, persons and/or organizations, with reference to location of complete story in the newspaper. Full text of the New York Times is available on the New York Times database in some libraries.

Predicasts F & S Index: Monthly, cumulated quarterly and annually: In some libaries you may find the information from this index in the PROMT database. Indexes over 750 business, industry and trade journals. Section 1 (Industries and Products) covers articles on new products, product demand, market data, and sales according to the Standard Industrial Classification code number. Section 2 (Companies) covers articles on acquisitions, mergers, sales, profits, and other corporate data by company name Indexed by expanded SIC codes and company name (in separate sections), this source is especially valuable for its coverage of numerous trade journals as well as general business publications, the Wall Street Journal, and the business section of the New York Times. This coverage makes it particularly useful for finding information on smaller companies and industries.

Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. New York: H.W. Wilson Co. Semi-monthly with quarterly, semi-annual and annual Accumulations: Alphabetically arranged, subject and author index to articles published in about 150 periodicals, most of which are published for use of the general public.

Wall Street Journal Index. New York: Dow Jones. Monthly with annual accumulation. (Annual accumulation includes Barron’s Index.): Two sections: Corporate News is arranged alphabetically by company name; General News is arranged by subject. Brief abstract accompanies each entry.

The Trade Association Publications

The three primary trade associations for accommodations and food services publish several periodicals.
Club Managers Association of America: This association focuses on management in private and public golf and country clubs. Their primary publication is “Club Management.” The companion site on the web for the magazine is The Virtual Clubhouse. (http://www.club-mgmt.com/ )

National Restaurant Association

The NRA has two periodical publications, one on government issues affecting restaurants, Washington Weekly, and one on industry trends, TrendMapper. General industry news is on their web site, http://www.restaurants.org.

American Hotel and Lodging Association

The AHLA publishes the monthly “Lodging Magazine,” which has a companion web site at http://www.lodgingmagazine.com/ AHLA also provides an email newsletter, Lodging SmartBrief, which provides more current news than the monthly magazine can. You must be a member to subscribe, but student members receive both Lodging magazine and the newsletter as a benefit of membership.