10 Career Lessons I Learned From the Movies (Only Good Movies)
The movies may seem like strange place to get career advice but there are nuggets of truth in even the wackiest films if you know how to prospect for them. Moreover, with the economy continuing to founder, every bit of sound advice counts. Wouldn’t you agree?
Here are 10 Career Lessons I Learned From the Movies:
1. Your reputation is everything.
Trading Places: When preppy Wall Street trader Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and street hustler Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) become the pawns in a low-stake wager between two bored old guys, they learn that your good name is a terrible thing to waste.
2. Being a beautiful woman is an asset not a liability.
Working Girl: Even in the shoulder pad and necktie world of the 1980s, prescient Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) knew that there’s nothing wrong with having a head for business and a bod for sin.
3. Be careful how you pad your resume…especially if you’re only 17.
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead: It’s one of the 10 career lessons I learned from the movies before I even had my first job. No one wants to end up like high-schooler Sue Ellen Crandell (Christina Applegate), whose fictitious CV earns her way more job than she can handle.
4. Office romances can be very dangerous.
Secretary: A perfectionist lawyer (James Spader) and his young, mentally unstable secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal) end up in a dominant/submissive relationship that just keeps getting more intense. Even if you do play it safe and sane in your office dalliance, you can end up losing everything if either the job or the romance doesn’t pan out.
5. Your career is not your life.
The Devil Wears Prada: Although she resents working at just some fashion magazine instead of being a “serious journalist”, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) gets sucked into the glamorous world of ruthless Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep) and loses sight of this career lesson. No matter how chic it seems, don’t ditch your totally sweet, totally adorable boyfriend and caring friends for designer duds.
6. It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.
Ocean’s Eleven: You don’t have to be Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and planning to pull off the world’s biggest casino heist to harness the power of your networks. Keep track of who you know and you’ll always have access to the right man — or woman — for the job at hand.
7. Always keep your cool.
Grosse Pointe Blank: When career hit man Martin Blank (John Cusack) gets a job that brings him back home just in time to see his high school sweetheart (Minnie Driver) at their 10-year high school reunion, he is understandably flustered. But even with another assassin (Dan Aykroyd) and the feds hot on his tail, he proves he’s got this career lesson down pat.
8. You win some, you lose some.
The Devil’s Advocate: It’s a career lesson hotshot attorney Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) has to learn the hard way. His record of never having lost a case lands him a partnership in the law firm from hell and the devil he comes to know teaches him that winning isn’t everything.
9. If you hate what you do, do something else…as long as that something else isn’t theft and arson.
Office Space: Mike Judge’s anti-crappy-job manifesto comes with this important lesson: Life’s too short for TPS report cover sheets and flare. Too bad it takes an encounter with an ailing hypnotist for Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) to realize it.
10. No amount of career success is worth selling your soul.
Wall Street: As stockbroker Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is taken deeper under the wings of corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), he begins to lose sight of his own morality and becomes unrecognizable even to himself. Greed may — or may not — be good but hell has no fury like the SEC scorned.
