“No point hiring image consultants if your own receptionist is letting you down” says David Hepworth.

I admire David Hepworth as a writer and commentator, I still miss The Word which he and Mark Ellen ran for nearly a decade. I never thought that I would share one of his blog postings on this site but he nails it, as does Lucy Kellaway in her FT piece (sadly behind a paywall).

Here’s his post:

No point hiring image consultants if your own receptionist is letting you down
Piece in FT by Lucy Kellaway about how much you can tell about a visitor from the way they deal with a receptionist. All true. By the same token that visitor can also tell a lot about a company by the way the receptionist behaves.

I regularly sit in reception in a building used by one very high-profile public body and never fail to be amazed by the gossip and parochial whinging the staff seem content to let me overhear.

Kellaway talks about a company who have a spy among their reception staff whose job it is to report on the behaviour of waiting job candidates. Some managements should have a spy among the people waiting. They might find out a few things about their public image that would horrify them.