Recently I read a blog post by a young woman who had been fired from her job. She went to lengths to complain about how she felt betrayed by the company, then somehow backtracked and explained how she understood why the company fired her…because she was a horrible employee. She didn’t say it in those exact words, but she lead me to believe that she was a horrible employee. As I read her post, I repeatedly asked myself “what is this girl thinking!?” She might as well just write “Horrible Employee, Don’t Hire Me” on her resume. All it takes is for one prospective employer to Google her and she’s no longer a candidate.

Too often people pour their souls onto the Internet, whether it be a friends wall posting or a blog post, and once it is up, it is permanent. A snapshot of how you were feeling at one point in time has been published to the world, and you can’t change your mind on it. We are the first generation that grew up with social media, our lives are practically public information from politically incorrect jokes we write on a friends facebook wall, to the many many inappropriate pictures of us that other people took and tagged us in. For many it won’t really matter, but for those with big dreams (specifically business, political, or athletic) it may.

For the last 7ish weeks I’ve obviously taken a bit of a hiatus from writing. Some of the hiatus had to do with writers block, some had to do with a lack of desire to write, but a good bit of it was actually me censoring myself. As a writer who draws from his own life experience for just about every post, it’s now much harder to write since my co-workers know about this site. Now, if I write about a bad day at work, even if I write about what I’ve learned from it and try to spin it in a positive light, I could come off as complaining (something no one likes). If I write about how I really messed something up, I could (or would in one instance) become a direct target for all the blame, when I shouldn’t be.

Protecting your personal brand online is fairly easy, and protecting it offline is too, but when those worlds collide it becomes a much different world. These instances are even becoming newsworthy: someone on disability posts facebook pictures of them skydiving, someone fires an employee then updates their status telling the world why, or my personal favorite someone gets a job offer then tweets about it saying how the money is great but the company sucks. I’m not saying to have two different “brands” but think of it like this: your work persona vs. your out at the bars persona. Your friends may not care how you act at work, but your boss may care how you act out at the bars.

Over the coming years, as more members of Gen-Y run for office, and further succeed in business and sports it will be interesting to see the scandals that come from all of this, but I think the bigger question is, as Gen-Y becomes even more of an influence will anyone care about poor decisions posted on facebook or twitter? After all we’ve all had them.

Related posts:

  1. An Open Farewell Letter To My Co-Workers
  2. No One Cares About Your Resume, and Why You Should
  3. You Are Who You Associate With
  4. What Do Your Trophies Mean For Your Career?