I was having a conversation recently with a coworker of mine about how your professional life has such a major impact on your personal life but it kind of got me thinking, how about the other way around?  What are some things that have the ability to hurt your career that stem from your personal life? Think its completely separate? Well, back and relax, I am going to hand you a big steaming pile of context.  Here are some personal things that can rough up your career.

1) Living a truely deviant lifestyle and/or crime
Everyone has the ability to choose what they want to do with their lives and hey, more power to you.  But there are things that go too far, particularly if you want to have a successful career.  If you are spending time in jail, doing illegal things, or are even too far out on the fringe of social normals, like or not but your career will suffer.  “Uh boss, yeah I can’t make it into work for the next 30 days, I am uh well, there was an unexpected…uh, Im in jail.”  Yeah thats gonna go over like a porcupine in a balloon factory.  This is also the part where affairs, and other improprieties can really nail you.  Don’t believe me?  Ask our last president.

2) Taking care of personal things at work
So everyone makes a personal call at work every once in a while, its unavoidable.  Some people do more than that, much more.   Do not be one of those people, you will at some point run into something. At best, have some awkward moments.  At worst case you could be fired.  An example is, I never write any blog entries at work, aside from being unethical, it could also get me in trouble.  I will occaisonally post from work as far as just pressing the post button, but that is as far as it goes.

3) Myspace/Facebook
I know someone that I work with that I can promise you if senior management saw this person’s myspace page this person would be fired on the spot.  Yes I know its a place for self expression but guess what, its public domain.  If your employer or someone researching you finds this, its completely fair game for making judgments on character. And yes,they can discriminate based on what they find on your page.  You created a public record of yourself and things they could never ask you in an interview they are now finding out based on you offering it up.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t be proud of who you are, but think of recent cases of teachers being fired for drunk pics on their myspace pages.

4) Expressing views/beliefs in office
Bringing your personal views out in the office can cause a ton of tension and a lot of bitterness.  These parts of your personal life should stay way away from the office.  I like to count Tom Cruise in this category because though he wasn’t necessarily expressing his views on set, he make such a scene off camera that his studio dumped him.  Ouch.

Bucking the trend:
Office Romance - This one is obvious why there could be some serious problems having an office romance but considering Lauren and I met at work, I can’t really tell other people not to do it.  I will say if things hadn’t worked out between us it could have been very difficult.  If you are going to pursue someone that you work with make sure that it is really someone you are interested in for the long term, I think that is generally the litmus test.  In my case, I think wife counts as long term

Comments RSS