“Things I Will Never Do After Being In HR For 10 Years” (11 Mistakes)

You will not catch me harping on a mistake I've made. I will acknowledge it and I will provide you with a solution, but I'm not going to harp on it. I learned that the hard way. I used to think like, "Oh, I need to own my mistake, so people know I can take accountability." No, no, because then they will harp on it too. And hold it against you. Nope. Let's focus on solutions and move the f**k on.

Sharing too much does not do you any good at any point in your career. Especially when you know that you're trying to move up. You're trying to establish yourself as a reputable person within a company. Do not overshare, it will only come back to haunt you.

You will not catch me at company functions like happy hours, holiday parties for longer than an hour and a half. The truth is, people start drinking, stuff starts happening and I do not want to be associated.

I absolutely refuse to vent to my manager. And I did this early in my career because I thought my manager was cool. And they were a cool person, but I vented, thinking, like, whatever, they asked me how things are going. And it bit me in the back because it ended up being that they thought I was unengaged. I was unhappy. And the reality is, is no job is perfect. You're not always going to be like, happy go lucky about it. And yeah, he told people that I was really unhappy with my job. I will vent to someone else.

I am not taking anything personally from work. I used to do this and I had to shift my mindset and remind myself that there are a lot of other things going on that don't have to do with me. And I shouldn't take things personally and think it's an attack on who I am. Having emotional intelligence definitely helped me with this one.

You will never catch me being humble ever again. I used to think being humble was going to get me far. People would appreciate me and say "Oh, she's nice." No. So many successful women I work with are far from humble and will literally make sure that they enter a room and their presence is felt.

And number two, which I started doing later on in my career, was only working for somebody or under somebody who I wanted to learn from. I take the time to look at people's LinkedIn. Like, I've just picked up that habit later in my career. Let me see the role I'm applying to, who it's reporting to, and I get it, sometimes you can't control it, some but not all jobs lend themselves to do that. But I look at jobs as a two-way street. So it's not just me providing you know, a company with my expertise and my knowledge and my skill set. I also want to learn in turn. So a paycheck is not enough for me. Develop me, help me grow. Teach me things that you've learned in your career. I value that, maybe not everybody else does. Maybe a lot of people don't just want a paycheck. Your girl wants to grow.

I would not be an extremist. What does that mean? That means you're not over the top cheery and over the top everything. Or, on the other extreme, not chatty, not talking, not sociable. Finding a balance is everything in the workplace that people have told me "Wow, you really display emotional intelligence, you really seem very calm." And granted, personality is a big deal. So I'm not saying don't be yourself, but balance is everything.

I will not be introducing work people to my personal life people, if that makes sense. I have seen so many messy investigations come across my desk because people start cheating or not getting along and it seeps right into work. That's the first place it goes. Not doing it.

I am not sharing my age, you will not catch me doing this for the life of me. I've had people beg me, I've had people swear they're never going to share it with anybody else. No, I clearly look young. So that's already somewhat of a disadvantage in a corporate environment, because people do tend to judge and think, "Oh, you have your whole life ahead of you." No, you're not passing me up because of my age. If I'm qualified for the job. That's all that should matter.

You are not going to catch me being too emotional at work, there's a balance. And I'm not saying you need to be a robot. No, you need to have emotional intelligence. And that took me some time to master. But it is definitely the top two or three qualities you need to be successful. And I'm not just talking about work, I'm talking about as an individual, for yourself. Having that emotional balance allows you to make decisions, not based on emotions, but a little bit more based on facts. And then you also know when to weigh in or introduce emotions, whether it's empathy, even if you know, you want to lighten up a mood and be a little bit more on the soft side. But having emotional intelligence is a must. So you are not going to catch me being overly emotional about something at work. Nope. And I will say just so you're aware, I used to be a crier. Like when I used to get frustrated or upset about things, I would cry at work sometimes. That was the biggest mistake I could have ever made. Ever. Do you know why? Because people then started to take me less seriously and thought I was just driven by emotion. Now, miss me with that.