Ways your personal life can hurt your professional life, or Don't Be Tom Cruise

Can you blame Sumner Redstone for severing Paramount Pictures' ties with Tom Cruise.  I mean, do you know anyone who doesn't think Tom has gone completely crazy?  But to lose a deal with Paramount Pictures probably worth hundreds of millions of dollars? 

Despite lower than expected domestic ticket sales, Mission Impossible III and War of the Worlds went on to gross $393 million and $591 million respectively in global sales.  So, it doesn't appear to be a business decision.  Redstone was quoted as saying, "As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal.  His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."  That's corporate speak for, "Tom has gone looney toones, and we don't want anything to do with him."

So, I began to wonder.  What can you do in your personal life that could hurt your professional life?  Here's a list of things I came up with.  Feel free to add anything I forgot.

1. MySpace.  MySpace has become more than the music sharing service that was originally intended.  It is a social network, and avenue of self expression.  But watch how much you are expressing yourself.  There are certain questions a potential employer cannot ask you in an interview, but if you put stuff about your marital status, political affiliations, number of children, weekend drug or alcohol use, sexual preference, illegal activities...  and your current or potential employer finds this (by accident or diligent searching) it is completely fair game.  You have created a public record of your personal life.
2. Watch your credit score.  With your approval, a current or potential employer can pull your credit report.  What are they looking for?  Irresponsible use of credit may be a precursor to an irresponsible employee.  Massive amounts of debt may mean an employee who is taking creditor calls or worse, looking for ways to skim a little extra off the top.
3. Office Romance.  You've all heard the warnings, don't fish off the company pier.  However, despite this advice a MSN Dating article tells us that over one third of us date people at work.  It's all roses and puppy dogs, unless things go awry.  Be aware of company policies, but even if your company does not explicitly outlaw the office romance, be aware of the potential risks involved.
4. Illegal activities.  Stay out of trouble.  This should be obvious.

That's all I have.  Any other contributions?

Comments

[frankyj]

Yea,
When he started talking about that actress who suffered from post-partum depression (Brooke Shields?) and how she shouldn't be taking anti-depressants, I think that pushed people over the edge. I mean, it was almost like he was attacking this vunerable woman. Tough luck.

[prlinkbiz]

The My Space one is a great one, because My Space pages always get higher search engine rankings, and um, they are not always the information you want out there! Of course, any personal information on the internet should be carefully guarded- blogs, comments etc. You can find links to information years back- psossibly info you'd rather not have out there!

[mapgirl]

Blogging will get you dooced. Read Dooce.com and see how she got fired because of her blog. I avoid writing directly about my job at my PFBlog for that reason.

[lamoneyguy]

Yea mapgirl, that's why I blog anonymously and don't blog from work. I generally write my posts in the evening and schedule them to post the next morning.

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