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Etiquette Brings Students to the Table

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- Joanne Mahanes was young and admittedly nervous when she sat down for a job interview over lunch, tried to pierce the cherry tomato on her salad plate and watched in horror as it flew across the table and into her interviewer's lap, creating a lasting vinaigrette impression on his pants.

Then there was the time she went to sit down in a restaurant and accidentally caught the edge of the tablecloth in her chair, pulling everything off the table with her.

Mahanes, now the coordinator of career development at the University of Virginia, has gotten a lot of mileage out of those long-ago embarrassments. She has good-naturedly turned them into the backbone of what is fast becoming the hottest ticket on campus here: a formal table setting at one of her three-hour corporate-etiquette dinners, a do's-and-don'ts primer aimed at giving U-Va. students a leg up in the job marketplace by polishing their social skills.

For three hours one recent night, 180 soon-to-graduate students put aside their fast-food habits and sat at the linen-draped tables in the candlelit ballroom of the school's Alumni Hall, with nary a baseball cap nor a pair of Birkenstocks in sight.

They soaked up every word Mahanes had to offer on when to use each of the seven pieces of silverware arrayed before them, how to eat their soup, which direction to pass the bread, and whether it's acceptable to push food onto your fork with a knife. (Answers: work from the outside in; scoop away from you; counterclockwise; yes.)

Sprinkled throughout the catered, four-course meal were nightmare tales from job recruiters of promising young candidates whose employment hopes were run aground by social blunders during mealtime interviews.

There was the applicant who salted his meal before tasting it. Not hired; too hasty. And the applicant who ordered filet mignon and fine wine. Not hired; too expensive. And the applicant who, after dining at a four-star restaurant with a recruiter, asked for a doggy bag. Not hired; too tacky (although some in the audience thought he would have been a good employee, having shown he wouldn't waste the company's resources).

Virginia Nguyen, a fourth-year student, said she attended the dinner to try to feel more comfortable with her table manners.

"I had no idea there were so many forks and spoons and glasses," said the 20-year-old from Richmond.

William Reinhold, 21, of Charlottesville, wanted to brush up on "those little picky things you might not think about but which might make [a recruiter] throw your resume in the trash bin."

Nicole Harrington agreed. "I know the basics from home," the 21-year-old economics major from Alexandria said, "but I wanted to sharpen my skills."

Julie Robey, a U-Va. graduate who now works for Procter & Gamble, attended the etiquette dinner last year. She said it helped ease her nervousness during subsequent job interviews.

"You shouldn't be as concerned about which fork you're using as being confident about presenting yourself," Robey said. "Having had the course, you think, `Okay, I know how to eat properly. That's one less thing I need to worry about.' "

Mahanes began the dinners six years ago as part of a career strategies workshop she devised.

"U-Va. does a great job with the academic discipline, how to be a scholar," she said, "but I don't think we've done enough to help students make the transition from academics to the world of work."

Although some faculty members pooh-poohed the idea as unbefitting the university's refined reputation, Mahanes recognized that many of her students came from families with a single parent or two working parents and had done most of their chowing down in front of the microwave or television. And those who did have some schooling in proper manners often needed a refresher course after four years of dining hall and collegiate life.

In 1991, Mahanes put on her first etiquette dinner, a small affair for the university's basketball team that she hoped would boost team members' job prospects. Mahanes said she fully realized the need to hold more such dinners near the end of that first meal, when the player seated next to her leaned over and asked whether he could finish off her chicken.

Soon Mahanes was holding dinners for other U-Va. athletes, and gradually she expanded the event to include any U-Va. student who wanted to come.

As demand increased, the dinners outgrew their home in Thomas Jefferson's famous Rotunda, the school's architectural showpiece.

"We had a wait list the size of Texas," said Mahanes, who last year moved the dinner to the larger Alumni Hall.

Students paid $15 each this year to attend, "so they feel vested and don't blow it off," Mahanes said. The rest of the $6,000 tab was picked up by the university and CS First Boston, a New York investment firm that recruits at the university.

"These kids are from good homes, but their parents are probably tired, by the time they're in college, of correcting them for the nth time," said Mark Krebs, a recruiter for Northwestern Mutual Life in Charlottesville. Krebs said that by teaching applicants basic social skills, the dinners allow him to "spend my time on product and technique. I don't have to worry that a guy is going to walk into a business meeting with a golf shirt on."

U-Va. graduate Jason Pontius spotted a few gaps in his social graces when he attended last year's dinner.

"I give credit to my parents for not raising a barbarian," Pontius said, "but you do get out of practice with your shrimp fork when you are eating buffalo wings at the fraternity house."

As for his manners now, Pontius, a market researcher in Brussels, said: "I'm certainly not ready for tea with the queen, but I feel I can handle myself properly in almost any situation."