Pleasant people don't have to stop to think about how they present themselves to their fellow employees on a daily basis. People who aren't naturally pleasant should stop and ponder this, from a business point of view.
Just as personality plays a large role in the hiring process, it continues to influence each person's career advancement. It seems so simple, yet many people fail to realize it and eventually find themselves falling behind and wondering why.
Because data processing tends to be an insular occupation (less so today), the people working in it tend to lose sight of the fact that there is a broader world outside the DP department that is made up of people, and that getting along with them is a necessity if that broader world is to be explored and conquered. It comes down once again to the reality that technical competence, while important in the beginning stages of a data processing career, becomes less so as a person advances.
The reason an interviewer will choose someone with a bright, pleasant, and warm personality is axiomatic: when you have a pool of people from which to hire, and the people in that pool are equally competent, you might as well bring into the organization someone who will be a pleasure to spend each day with.
The same holds true when considering people for promotion. No one wants to deliberately bring into their sphere a sourpuss or someone lacking in a sense of humor, which so often can make the difference between a tense, strained data processing department and one that functions smoothly under pressure.
Speaking of a sense of humor, a survey I did of top executives in corporations across America showed that a sense of humor is, indeed, an important ingredient in business success. The survey -which asked personnel directors and vice-presidents of a hundred of America's top one thousand corporations whether people with a sense of humor were better, the same as, or worse at their jobs than people with little or no sense of humor- indicated that 84 percent felt that employees who had a good sense of humor did a better job than their dour colleagues. Why? Because people with a sense of humor tend to be more creative, less rigid, and more willing to consider and embrace new ideas and methods, to say nothing of being a pleasure to be with.
Getting along with people can be considered a political act-or art; another reason that the term "politics" should not be viewed in a negative light. None of this suggests being a phony, but it does stem from my belief that as long as anyone is going to bother getting up in the morning and going to work, they might as well be pleasant about it. It enriches the working lives of those around them and, ultimately, can help enrich their own professional lives.
The same principle can be applied to the way you dress on the job. Whatever the prevailing dress code of your department and company, taking the trouble to wear clean and pressed clothing that portrays an upbeat, caring personality and being well groomed make a positive statement about you. We all like to be around men and women like this and prefer to avoid those who don't care about how they look.
If your eye is set on becoming part of upper management, consider that when choosing the clothes you wear to work each day. The DP department might be casual, but it usually isn't that way in the executive suite.
Joan Bernstein, our data processing specialist in the Robert Half New York office, comments, "Management expects DPers to be 'regular people,' as well as fitting the corporate image. From what I have observed, DP and Brooks Brothers make a likely team for the eighties."
