Photo credit: www.go4costumes.com
Put for a moment on hold everything you’ve heard about branding yourself and what you should share online and how that could be harmful to how your “professionalism” is viewed. One 21st century Boogie Man goes by the name “Potential Employer.” Tequila at the bar with your friends? The girl who takes pictures of everything capturing your after-shot-tequila-face? Pictures came up on Facebook? What would potential employers think of that?
More importantly: What do you think about working for an entity that scrutinizes your personal life to the extreme that non-illegal activities are blown out of proportion to the extent that your job/career is jeopardized?
I say: Be yourself. On Facebook, on Twitter, on your blog, wherever you are that leaves a trail.
And anyways: Going into a job and portraying yourself as someone as other than you are is a bad MO. It’s like neglecting to tell your significant other about your other wife and kids in Croatia.
Here’s the wishfully thinking example: A hot grade school teacher is also a stripper. It happens. Teacher salaries do not allow for many Caribbean vacations. That would be something you would want to hide from the former employer. But the bigger issue is: really, Dr. Jeckel? Hawthorne warns, “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” The Bible even makes some sense on the issue, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”
Save yourself the trouble of working for someone who doesn’t approve of you and save them the trouble of hiring someone they don’t want: Be yourself.
Lloyd Dobler in “Say Anything” had a point there.
