Three Mistakes That Can Kill Your Career

When you first land a new job, you’re usually extra careful to mind you manners and go the extra lengths not to step on anyone’s toes. You want to simply fit in until you being to feel a bit more comfortable offering your opinion or suggesting innovative ideas.

Over time, you’ll get much more comfortable in your working environment. You’ll barely be able to remember the timid, wide-eyed version of yourself that first stepped into that office building. You might move up to become one of the more senior, respected members of your company.

However, some employees can become a bit too comfortable. Others will simply act in bad taste in misguided attempts to move their way up the corporate ladder. No matter how long you’ve been employed with one company, it only takes one bad mistake to be removed from your position.

If you want to keep your job and remain in the good graces of management, as well as your fellow coworkers, there are a few simple actions you should avoid. Here are five terrible mistakes that can effectively kill your career:

Act Out Of Rage or Revenge

While we don’t recommend acting out of these motivations in any aspect of your life, these actions are more quickly excused if they occur outside the workplace. The office can be a very unforgiving environment.

Speaking, quitting, or otherwise behaving out of rage or revenge is a quick way to get the hook. Even if you keep your job, you’ll quickly find yourself alienated from the rest of your coworkers. People don’t want to work closely with anyone they sense to be an unpredictable “loose cannon.”

Backstab Colleagues

This one’s obvious. It’s frightening that the “dog-eat-dog” attitude continues to be popular in larger corporations. Employees are so quick to ridicule, disparage, or undermine their colleagues. In some cases, this behavior can pervade people’s lives outside of work and compromise their relationships with friends and family as well.

While we all need to vent our frustrations from time-to-time, you’re always better off confronting your issues head on, rather than trying to bring someone down from behind their back. In the end, this will never work, and you’ll be left feeling immature and humiliated.

Lie

In every workplace, trust is key. You have to be able to trust your boss to make the decisions that are best for your company as a whole. You have to trust your coworker to work together on a shared project. You have to trust your secretary to effectively organize your weekly, monthly, and yearly schedule.

The workplace is adamantly dependent on maintaining trust levels. Lying about an issue or blunder is a quick way to the door. Most often, we lie because we fear the consequences of the truth. We fail to realize that the truth will come out eventually, and we will suffer more if we lie than if we simply come clean from the get-go.

While there are certainly other workplace mistakes that can get you fired, these are a few quick ways to find yourself in the unemployment line. If you’re looking for career opportunities in Canada, Summit Search has got you covered. Please visit us online or find the recruiting office near you today!

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