An image management company turns personal style into professional advantage.

By Jason Roberts

Seven seconds. That’s all the time we have to make a good first impression. In today’s business world, where winning means everything, creating the right kind of professional look is not only critical to good first impressions, it’s also a means of communicating survival and success.

Advance Image and Etiquette Consulting, an image management company, offers training and private consultation to clients who work in today’s über-competitive business world. The company specializes in helping clients to maximize their personal image to create the best professional advantage.

“Image management relates to the three most crucial areas of what makes up your professional persona,” says Charmaine Mills, founder of Advance. “Those three areas are appearance, behaviour and communication. The key to a successful image is finding the balance between all the components and effectively making them work for you in business.”

According to Mills, in a recent discussion with an HR executive, it was concluded that if two equally qualified candidates applied for a job, the tiebreaker would be the applicant with the more professional image. It’s just one example of how extremely important image is in today’s workplace. “To succeed in this kind of aggressive global economy,” says Mills, “we always have to be at the top our game.”

Since being founded in 2005, Advance  has been offering just the type of world-class training in image management that both men and women need to be on top of their game. Having grown to be a leading-edge image consulting company, Advance offers its services online, through teleseminars and one-on-one by telephone.

Clients are as varied as beauty pageant contestants, university students, political candidates and startup entrepreneurs. Advance has also witnessed how the changes in the global economic climate, such as the recent recession, have created an environment in which the value of one’s image has increased exponentially.
With this demanding new change, a unique set of challenges has been opened up for young professionals seeking a way to get noticed and make their mark in business.

Advance has carefully designed its structure to overcome these challenges by offering diverse and personalized services. Says Mills: “My goal has always been to exceed client’s expectations and that’s one of the key principals to our success.”

To learn more about Advance Image and Etiquette Consulting, visit advanceimageconsulting.ca