With the summer social season upon us it’s time to straighten your tie, freshen up your lippy and make sure that you have plenty of business cards handy. Workplace parties, whether cocktail-hour events or postconference blowouts, can be a good time to meet new people and get to know colleagues in a less formal atmosphere. Here’s how not to do it.

Chew garlic. Bad breath is a big no, says Sanchita Saha, the founder of CitySocialising, a networking club, and an ambassador for the Make Your Mark entrepreneurship campaign. One normally sociable chap found himself shunned when he arrived at an event stinking of garlic. “He turned up looking forward to meeting lots of new people, but after an hour he couldn’t work out why people weren’t talking to him for longer than five minutes,” she says. “No one had the heart to tell him ... so he finally left early complaining that it was a ‘really unfriendly crowd’.”

Chew your fellow guests. Uma Rajah, the chief marketing officer at Wigadoo, a social events organisation website, suggests keeping your alcohol intake under control. “A colleague at a consultancy worked with a graduate who had a habit of biting people when she was drunk ... once she bit ten people, including two partners. They had to have tetanus jabs and explain why they were coming home with bite marks.” The biter was moved to a different office. I doubt that it was a promotion.

Relax. It’s easy for a social event to lull you into a false sense of security but it’s not a good idea to let your hair down when there are people present who can affect your career. A new graduate trainee at Rajah’s former employer had the right idea when she withdrew to her hotel room after realising that she’d got a bit tipsy at a postconference party. Unfortunately, drinking brought out her sleepwalking tendencies. “In the early hours of the morning she was found in the lift, stark naked,” Rajah says. From then on she was known throughout the company as “the naked lift girl”.

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Bust a move too soon. Hitting the dancefloor while everyone else is exchanging business cards is a bad idea, Saha says; wait until later. “We had a guy who arrived early and after just two drinks appeared to lose all inhibitions. At 8.30pm, when the party was just starting to fill up, arriving guests were greeted by him flailing around on the dancefloor and singing at the top of his voice to Man in the Mirror. When the track finished he looked ever so pleased with himself.” He strolled to the bar and waited to be mobbed by an adoring public but, perhaps strangely, he was left well alone.

Let your nerves rule your brain. One of Rajah’s contacts – let’s call him Fred – was at a networking event when his boss pointed out a very senior manager – let’s call her Mary – who was over from the US. Fred’s boss told him who she was and encouraged him to talk to her. Fred, fearing that he might forget her name, muttered “Mary, Mary” to himself as he approached. He smiled, took a deep breath, and introduced himself. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Mary.”

Start as you mean to go on. Daytime events, such as the races, last for hours. If you knock back your first champagne the moment that you arrive you’ll be beyond repair well before the horses pass the finishing line. If you’re not “pub fit”, wait until at least halfway through the day to crack open the alcohol, says Khalid Aziz, the chairman of Aziz Corporation, a training consultancy. He remembers seeing a woman at Ascot develop alcohol-induced Tourette’s: “She had a mouth like a sewer and nobody could keep her quiet,” he says. This is bad enough when you’re abusing colleagues and/or clients, but add cameraphones and YouTube and your career could fly completely out of the window.

Dress down. Always check the small print on the invitation. “I was at an event in the middle of summer where someone turned up wearing shorts, sandals and a polo shirt,” Aziz says. Bad enough if the dress code had required business-wear; particularly unfortunate given that everyone else was in black tie. It’s also possible to go too far in the other direction, says one anonymous employee. “My boss goes to a lot of black-tie award events, so when yet another invitation landed on her desk she put on a designer evening dress and headed off. When she got there everyone else was in normal office clothes.” At least if you’re overdressed you can pretend you have somewhere more important to be afterwards; that’s harder in shorts.

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