Do You "Click" With Your Co-workers?

A recent article in Bloomberg Business Week highlighted the immense importance of fitting in with your co-workers in the office social network. This is a topic of particular importance, as I have touched upon it numerous times in my recent book Engagement: Jump Start Your Audit Career in Public Accounting. The article sites various studies that indicate people with a high self-monitoring ability (a.k.a. ability to click with others) can get to the core of their office networks and promote their careers within an average of 18 months, compared with a jaw-dropping 13 years for some introverted workers who did not easily connect with their colleagues.

My book relates this discovery to your career in public accounting. It is extremely important to begin networking with firm recruiters as early as possible in your academic accounting career, even as a freshman. The more familiar the firms' employees are with your face and name, the more likely they are to recommend you for an interview or job. This is confirmed by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, who found that "encountering a stranger on 10 occasions instead of five makes us find that individual more attractive, intelligent, warm, and honest."

One of the key things new associates are advised to do upon entering a firm is to get involved and raise their profile among peers. Join internal committees, volunteer for new projects with people you may not have worked with before, and network at regional or national training events. When promotions and bonuses are considered, your name will rise to the top of the list if you have made a significant number of connections with colleagues throughout your firm who can recommend you.

It's also important not to dodge social events or occasional office chit-chat with co-workers. If you keep yourself pent up in your cubicle all day long without making a personal connection with your co-workers or clients, they will likely assume you are unsocial, proud, or can't be trusted, simply because you made no effort to reveal your real self.

Do not underestimate the significance of social interactions in advancing your career. Yes, it's important to be good at your job and prove yourself a competent accountant, but if you want to get promoted in 18 months rather than 13 years, get to know the people around you, from administrative assistants to partners. You never know whose opinion of you may be the key to open your door to the opportunity of a life time.

To read the Bloomberg Business Week article entitled "Etc. Social Studies," see the June 14-June 20, 2010 issue, page 72.