While most career advice focuses on how to succeed, we can all learn valuable lessons by dissecting career failure as well. Workplace experts offer insights into some of the top ways workers undermine their own careers and jeopardize their career development.
- Not Taking Your Education Seriously: If you party too much in college and end up with a run of the mill 2.5 GPA, you'll be passed over for the best entry-level jobs, says New York City based executive recruiter and coach Brian Drum of Drum Associates.
- Not Having a Plan: In the current poor job market, you may have defaulted into a career you aren't crazy about. That is OK, as long as you develop career plans to get where you want to be.
- Lying: You'll lose professional credibility in a hurry if you lie, from exaggerating on your resume to getting caught fibbing on Facebook.
- Sullying Your Reputation on Facebook or Twitter: Social media can harm your reputation in other ways, too. Personal posts and tweets from work -- when you are supposed to be doing your job -- can tag you as a slacker.
- Not Respecting Professional Boundaries: Sharing TMI about your personal life with colleagues is unprofessional.
- Gossiping, Slandering, Excessively Criticizing: If you publicly bash fellow employees, the boss, the board of directors or even your competitors, you'll be perceived as negative at best and a troublemaker at worst.
- Carrying on an Inappropriate Relationship with Your Boss: A romantic entanglement with a boss can do real damage to your ability to collaborate with peers.
- Not Controlling Your Alcohol Intake or Libido: Getting drunk at the office party or on a business trip damages your credibility. Ditto a romantic, ahem, "indiscretion" that your colleagues know about.
- Job-Hopping Just for the Money: Job-hopping -- in moderation -- may not automatically disqualify you from a position. "But it gets to the point -- like if you have seven or eight jobs by the time you are 35 -- that employers are not going to want to invest in you," Drum says.
- Losing Touch with References: You'll kick yourself later if you leave a job without collecting personal contact information from colleagues who can serve as professional references for you in the future.
- Leaving a Job on Bad Terms: Don't become a lame duck when you've got one foot out the door, Drum says. "The employer only remembers about the last five minutes you were there," he says.
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