What Every Graduate Should Know Before Starting Work

Graduate in cap and gown standing before a large maze with a city skyline and sunrise in the background

College graduations are around the corner.

In my 26 years in the corporate world, I’ve seen too many young professionals sabotage their career start. They fail to recognize new pitfalls. To the Class of 2026, here are a few things to keep in mind:

If you grew up sharing your Netflix and Disney+ passwords with friends, please be warned: you will likely get fired if you share any work passwords with anyone, inside or outside of the organization. This is true even if your supervisor asks you to share your password with a colleague while you are on vacation (true story).
Think before posting pictures of your colleagues or work environment on social media. Even though you grew up doing this at school and at camp and at Starbucks, many organizations have policies prohibiting such posts.
Chances are you will also have to add a disclaimer to all of your online profiles (LinkedIn, Instagram, X, etc.), reading something like “Any views expressed are solely mine and not those of my employer.” And that disclaimer doesn’t give you permission to post anything you want. A racist post will bring discredit to your employer and can be cause for termination. I recall the story of an employee disciplined for posting a picture of himself holding a Confederate flag on his private Facebook page. A “friend” was rightfully offended and forwarded the post to the company’s hotline.

I could provide other examples but my point is that some of the behaviors your parents and teachers found acceptable or tolerated during your teenage years won’t fly in the workplace. It’s not always intuitive. Ask HR for your company’s policy manual on your first day and read it, especially the sections on social media, intellectual property, and conflicts of interests.

This is an exciting time for any young adult. Make sure your first work experience is a positive one by reevaluating your everyday behaviors through this new filter of the workplace.

How to raise money for Ukraine at work

In workplaces around the world, employees are coming together to help the Ukrainian people, especially the refugees. It’s a beautiful thing to see amidst the horrors of war.

Before money and necessary items can be collected and shipped to the front lines, someone at work needs to ask for donations. And this is where it gets tricky. Who can ask, and how the requests should be made, is often regulated.

It’s regulated for two reasons. First, companies want to avoid abuse-of-power situations. When senior leaders, or even first-line supervisors, ask employees to donate to a cause, many feel obliged to donate amounts they can’t afford, to causes they don’t believe in, for fear of embarrassment or retaliation. Second, some companies block all forms of solicitation, even for charitable causes, because it opens the door to union-forming activities (we won’t get into that here).

Therefore, many employers prohibit all types of solicitation in the workplace. No Girl Scout cookie sales, no toy drives during the holidays, no blankets for refugees.

Is that the right answer? Do we need such drastic measures to prevent the posting of a union flyer in the cafeteria? Here are some guidelines that can help you do good in the world without giving angst to your employer or putting undue pressure on your colleagues:

Ask a front-line employee to make the donation request, not a manager or leader.
Avoid face-to-face or email requests. Put a flyer up in a common room inviting people drop items off in a box or to donate anonymously to a GoFundMe page.
Clearly state that all contributions are voluntary, and make it credible. Use language that acknowledge the fact that many employees have already donated to the same cause outside of the office. Mention that some employees may not be able to give at this time.
Run your campaign by your HR professional and ask for feedback. Do the same with your ethics professional if you have one.

The appearance thereof

A good conflict of interest policy should seek to eliminate not only actual conflicts but also the appearance thereof.

This is what the US Congress is trying to do by banning members from trading individual stocks. It is not enough to review a trade after it has been made because, in many cases, the trade was made after a member received information from a classified briefing.

Take a look at your conflict policies, gift policies, even your anti-corruption policies. Are they filled with detailed prescriptions about who-can-receive-what-from-whom-and-under-what-amount? If so, it could be a sign that the activities you are trying to regulate might simply need to be prohibited.

Two sides to each conflict

What should you do if your spouse gets a job offer from a competitor of your employer?

Most people know they should report the potential conflict of interests to their ethics office. And most ethics officers will work with you and your colleagues in creating processes that will avoid actual conflicts and leaks from your organization.

But what about your spouse and the competitor? What is your and your organization’s responsibility? That is a step often overlooked by ethics officers. In some circumstances, it might be reasonable, even advisable, to ask the spouse to inform the competitor of the apparent conflict. In other cases, the ethics officer might even call the competitor’s ethics office to discuss the matter.

Think of it this way: we ask employees to disclose conflicts to their organization in part because if something goes wrong later on, it will look suspicious if the conflict was not disclosed, even if the conflict had no bearing on the thing going wrong. Similarly, we need to consider how our organization will be perceived if something goes wrong and we made no attempt to let the competitor know that we knew of the potential conflict, even if the conflict had no bearing on the thing going wrong.

To some, this might feel like overreaching. To me, it’s a reasonable additional layer of protection for all involved.

Mental toughness

Many studies have found that the most successful people are not the ones with the most intelligence or talent, but the ones with with the highest levels of mental toughness. Mental toughness, it turns out, is a skill that can be built by a series of small but regular wins.

So let’s say you want to become a more ethical leader. You start by defining what that means to you. It might be leading a training session on conflict of interests instead of letting HR do it. It might be sharing an ethical decision that you made in the company’s monthly newsletter. It might be recognizing an employee who made a good call as part of your weekly all-hands meeting. Whatever it is, the key is to find something easy, something that doesn’t require motivation, and to do it consistently. As you accumulate these small wins, you will assume the identity of an ethical leader. Once you truly think of yourself as an ethical leader, you will be emboldened and move from small wins to big ones.

What small win can you commit to for next week, and every week thereafter?

Self-preservation

People are asking if Biden’s administration will prosecute Trump after he leaves the office.

Answers include:

This is for the Department of Justice to decide and Biden will not interfere
It would be very unusual (in fact, it’s never been done before)
It might not be good for democracy
It could distract from the real work that needs to be done
It’s better to make sure that whatever Trump did cannot be done again
A new president should look forward, not backward
It’s a political time bomb
It could divide the country

Yes. All valid points.

But one basic, more personal reason seems to be missing: whoever first allows prosecution against his predecessor opens himself up to such prosecution.

A classic conflict of interest. Like the employee who riled against managers’ inflated bonuses until he became a manager, and then those bonuses were just fine and actually deserved.

Let’s go for a walk

We’ve all been in the office of a professional and felt intimidated and rushed. Whether it was a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant, we felt mildly stupid and taking too much of their time. Often it wasn’t something they said; it was simply all the diplomas on the walls and the big words they used and the speed of their speech.

Let’s make sure that we don’t make employees feel the same way when they seek our help as ethics & compliance professionals. For example, they should not feel bad about the fact that we can spot from a mile away a conflict of interest that is invisible to them, or that they didn’t know how to make a “noisy exit” during the inappropriate sales discussion at the trade show.

I once had a mentor who always took time to listen to me. Whenever I was facing a difficult situation and needed advice, he’d say “Let’s go for a walk”. Such comforting words! I knew I would get all the time needed, all the attention necessary.

Perhaps we can’t go on a walk with every employee seeking help. But we can make them feel seen and heard. Sometimes, that’s all they want.

Title of Nobility

Most conflict of interests policies seek to avoid two things: (1) actual conflicts and (2) situations that give even the appearance of a conflict.

The Title of Nobility Clause of the US Constitution (often referred to as the Emoluments Clause) is not as specific. Essentially, it simply states that a person holding office, like the President, should not accept anything of value from a foreign official without permission from Congress.

There is nothing in this clause addressing the appearance of impropriety. Nevertheless, early Presidents understood the importance of appearances and frequently gave away to the Department of State gifts that they received from foreign officials, rather than ask permission to keep the gifts for themselves.

Today, the current President is considering hosting the G7 meeting (a multi-million dollar affair) at a property he owns. Several people are trying to determine if this would constitute a breach of the Emoluments Clause. They are focusing on the letter of the law rather than on its spirit. Meanwhile, a 12-year old could tell you that it doesn’t look right.

Why not simply hold the G7 elsewhere?

Would they pay a bribe to work for you?

As I read Michael Volklov’s excellent summary of the college admission scandal, I wondered if any employee had ever bribed their way into my company.

Seems crazy? Ask yourself these questions: Has anyone ever lied on their resume to get a job with you (padding their educational or professional experience)? Has anyone ever improperly used a relationship they have with an existing employee to get through the door (a classic conflict of interest)? If your organization is large enough, the answer is probably yes.

So while it’s unlikely that any of your current managers would accept a bribe in exchange for a job, it’s not impossible. And it’s worthy of a fun 5-minute exercise during your next management meeting.

Put the odds in your favor

People tease me about my interest in poker. Is an ethics professional allowed to gamble?

My favorite poker game is Texas Hold’em. I like it because it’s mostly a game of skill, with the element of chance greatly reduced.

When you play enough poker, you start thinking about odds in other areas of your life, like when I see an employee misbehave at work. Let me explain and give you a simple example.

You are playing Texas Hold’em and your hole cards are of the same suit, say hearts. The flop reveals one more heart, and the turn is a heart as well. All you need is one more heart on the river to make your flush, which we’ll assume would be the winning hand.

What are your odds of getting that heart? Well, you know that there are 9 hearts left somewhere in the 46 cards that are still face down (either in the deck or face down in front of the other players). So you have about a 1 in 5 chance that the next card will be a heart.

Should you bet? Well, that depends on the size of the bet and the size of the pot. If you must bet $1 and the pot has $10 in it, it’s a good bet. Why? Because if you played that hand 5 times, you would lose $1 four times and win $10 one time. Over the long run, this is a winning move.

Conversely, if you had to bet $10 into a $40 pot, it would be a bad bet.

So what does this have to do with bad behavior at work?

Well, take the employee who steals $50 from the petty cash box at the reception desk. In some way, he is betting his $50,000 salary that he won’t get caught stealing $50. What he is essentially doing is betting $50,000 into a $50 pot. As we’ve seen, this is a good bet only if his odds of getting caught are lower than 1000/1. Given the financial controls around petty cash, the workplace cameras, other employees walking by, it’s clearly not a good bet.

We’ve all heard of the small-time thieves making this common mistake, impulsively robbing a convenience store with a sign on the door warning them of camera surveillance and that the cash register never contains more than $200. On the other hand, professional criminals make much better bets, going for big rewards after careful planning.

We see employees (and politicians, and celebrities, etc.) make these bad bets all the time. Harassment, discrimination, conflicts of interest – you name it. They bet their reputation and future earnings on small pots when the odds are against them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that employees should carefully plan bigger scams. What I’m saying is that an employee’s odds of getting away with wrongdoing in the modern corporation are very low. Too low to bet their future earnings and reputation.

We all have so much good to give, why not stack the odds in our favor?