Thinking about applying for that job you just saw advertised? But hang on... do you know what is involved when it comes to meeting someone new in a business environment, especially for an interview? On our course on 5th December 2011, the St Angela's Rep-London team and I learnt how to do these things. With representatives from the Deutsche bank Jin Chin and Sarah Wyer, we were taught what it involves to be able to present yourself properly.

The first task we did was introducing ourselves to the other members of the group by saying what our names were and an interesting fact about ourselves. 'My name is Remi and I am a middle child, with 5 other siblings'. It’s not interesting, I know, but the best thing I could come up with at such short notice! The next exercise we did was determining whether some celebrities are good or bad when comes to representing themselves. We assessed people such as Piers Morgan, Simon Cowell, Fearne Cotton, Tony Blair and President Barack Obama. It’s fair to say that all these people are good at presenting themselves; they are memorable characters, but on the other hand, they could also be bad. Take Simon Cowell for instance, we all know what kind of a character he's like!

We also got the chance to play the game zip, zap boing. The game taught us how to make good eye contact, by looking at the person you are firing at, have good body language, so you are facing the person and having fun by using your hands to make what you are doing seem more interesting. Unfortunately when we played this game, I was the first one out. *Sad face*. One of the last activities was learning how to hand shake properly and differentiating between a webbed grip and a wet fish. A webbed grip is a good firm handshake, making sure there is eye contact and body language is welcoming. A wet fish is a type of handshake where you don't really care or put much effort in so your hand looks like a wet fish out of the water trying to breathe. This is not the right stance to take to present yourself well and make a lasting impression.

The last task was learning some key information and then presenting it back to the Deutsche bank reps and our teacher who accompanied us. We learnt that to be a good presenter you must be welcoming, have good body language i.e. looking people in the eye when they are talking to you or vice versa, using hand gestures to make what you are talking about more interesting, speaking clearly and loudly and most importantly, looking like you enjoy what you are doing, so others enjoy what you are doing too.

Hope you enjoyed reading this and take something useful from it, so you know what expect when you do it.

Remi :)

p.s. oh and don't forget to try the biscuits there; they are the best!!! So yummy!!!