What Is Image Consulting? Career Prospects & Courses

It is a normal human tendency to form an image of a person when we meet them for the first time. The image that we have about an individual is influenced by a number of factors. Things like how the person dresses up, their body language, command over a language and other factors have a role to play here. Often it is seen that people who are competent in their work are not even considered capable because of the poor image that they carry of themselves.

As unfair as these sounds, the fact is that this is how the world works. If we want to create a name for ourselves, we will have to transform the image that we carry. While this is definitely not as easy as it sounds, it is not entirely impossible either. This is where the role of image consultants comes into the picture.

These people are responsible for grooming their clients in such a way that there is a complete transformation of their overall personality and image. Read on to know how you can make a successful career in image consultation.

· Job Duties

The main job role of an image consultant is to work in close association with individual clients or groups and come up with innovative measures to transform their personality as a whole. This will include making subsequent changes to the client's clothing, social etiquette and public speaking after taking into consideration all other factors (like the client's age, social background, expectations level, etc.)

The clients may approach them to make them fit for better professional roles. It is the duty of the image consultant to come up with customised plans for the upliftment of each of their individual clients.

· Educational Qualification

There is no one prerequisite degree that one needs to have completed in order to become an image consultation expert. You just need to be good at what you are doing. From an educational point of view, a mere graduation degree will suffice.

However, it is advisable for you to have a decent knowledge of fashion, hair and beauty therapy, consultancy human resource management, public relations and communication. If you feel that you are not confident about any of the aforementioned skill set, you can go ahead and obtain a diploma or certification, online or offline, in the same.

· Skills Required

In order to influence people to become what you want them to be, the first and foremost step would be to instil in them a sense of confidence in you. Your clients and students should be able to have faith in your abilities. For this, it is important that you develop a fine aesthetic sense yourself and that you dress up well.

Try to connect with people. Be a good listener and pay attention to details. In order to get clients, it is important for you to be dedicated to what you are doing and have an optimistic approach to life.

· Type Of Job

All of us can guess that the private sector is the area that is more concerned about things like looks and exterior presentations. Hence, needless to say, most of the jobs in this sector are that of the private field. Most organisations have public relations teams that hire image consultants to train their receptionists, representative agents and others about how to look and behave in public.

Fashion designing is another area where the services of these people are required in large volumes. The human resource management sector of organisations also requires the expert advice of image consultants in order to frame their policies and plans.

Other than this, these days a number of top schools and colleges hire image consultants to train and groom their students to make themselves stand out in the job world. Image consultants can either choose to associate themselves with a particular firm or organisation or they may want to freelance with a number of them.

Well-known image consultants can also choose to be self-employed wherein they set up their own consultancy firm and clients approach them directly.

· Nature Of Work

The best thing about this job is the fact that you will not be asked to work at odd hours or in shifts. Rarely will there be any work on the weekends. Moreover, there is a lot of opportunity for displaying your aesthetic abilities and every day is a new challenge here.

Thus, if you have a good understanding of how to convince people about what you want, then this job role will be the most perfect one for you. Depending on the firm or organisation that you are working with, this profession may require you to travel places.

· Salary

In this field, the salary you make will depend on the quality of work that you produce. The number of people you interact with, the city that you are based in and the number of hours that you are putting into the training all have a role to play here.

To improve your chances, you may consider coming up with some innovative training techniques. That will help you get a better name in the market, which will in turn increase your chances of getting a better pay. The average salary here is about Rs 4 lakhs.