One of the unpaid yet potentially awesome benefits of working in a vibrant, growing company is the access to a plethora of other young, smart and talented people. When that dynamic exists, it allows ample opportunities to build strong friendships, partnerships, and even romantic relationships to grow and thrive. It can also provide a platform for “hook up central.” Today, let’s focus on that.

Companies often do their best to keep their place of business as professional as possible, including “no dating policies” to keep things stable. Good intent, but let’s keep it real. Given that 36% of people admit to having hooked up with a co-worker, this strategy is doomed to fail. Why? Simple. When you spend more hours at the office than you do at home with a group of intelligent, like minded people in your dating demographic, sparks are bound to fly whether there is a policy in place or not. Note to companies: don’t try to stop it. Forcing people to sneak around and lie is so much worse. Rather, create some simple guidelines that might accomplish what you are after. For example: no dating anyone in your reporting chain, executives can’t date anyone, etc. You get the point.

For employees, however, that doesn’t suggest you should treat this situation lightly. You are still at WORK. Contemplating a relationship - or hookup - with a co-worker? Here are a few pointers to avoid your fantasy hook up turning into a career nightmare.

SHARE A CONNECTION OUTSIDE OF WORK  

It’s one thing to work with someone and feel the sparks fly partnering on a deadline or crossing paths at the coffee machine every morning. Sharing work in common is great; but if you don’t have any mutual interests outside of work, it can be short lived.  

Smart move:  If you think you really connect with someone from the office, invest in getting to know each other outside of the building before you agree to date. If something is there, awesome. If a true connection doesn’t exist, you just saved yourselves a whole lot of office awkwardness.

THINK IT THROUGH

It’s easy to get caught up in the romance of someone new and exciting in your life. When that occurs in the “real world,” you have the benefit of being able to bypass the person should the relationship go south. In the workplace, not so much. Before you jump right in, stop and consider what happens if things don’t work out. Will you still be able work together? Will this affect your career in a negative way?  

Smart move: Nobody ever enters a situation like this considering “what’s the worst that can happen?”  Be the person who does think that through before you move forward.

WHEN YOU ARE AT WORK, ACT LIKE IT

Work is not the place to put your personal life on display. Meaning, if you are dating someone in the office, behave in your normal manner. Go to lunch with your work friends. Tackle your daily project work. So many people attempt to “hide” their new relationship by sneaking around, entering the building two minutes apart, disappearing for “coffee” by themselves at odd times. Resist the urge.  

Smart move: You are at work to work, and you want to be known as the person creating incredible impact to your organization...not part of that couple who thinks they are pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes with their clandestine tryst.  Your co-workers know.  They always know.

DON’T TREAT A HOOK UP LIKE A RELATIONSHIP

Say you had a little too much to drink at the company summer party, and you ended up summoning enough courage to approach that hot co-worker you’ve been lusting over for the last three months. Say you hit the after party together, and ultimately “connect” after everyone has parted ways for the evening. Awesome, right? Umm, only if you two are on the same page about what happens next.  Maybe to one of you it was just a drunken hookup. Perhaps to the other it was the start of a serious relationship. One of you wants to forget it ever happened.  The other is busy updating their relationship status on Facebook.  

Smart move:  If you are adult enough to get yourself into that situation, you are adult enough to talk through what happens next. Have a conversation, and get on the same page. Sure that might be awkward; but it’s going to be a heck of lot worse when you get to the office on Monday with different agendas.

WHO AND WHEN TO TELL

Your personal life is your personal life. Even if you have close friends at the office, suppress the urge to share the gory details about your office romance with them. If you are on the same team, this is even more critical. Even if your colleagues are excited for you, you risk making things super awkward for them if you and your paramour are behaving like new lovers in the office.  And if your fling becomes a real thing? Come clean. Lying never gets you anywhere.  And it’s not just your colleagues who know; news about office romances spreads quickly.  Especially if it involves senior members of the team or married people.  

Smart move: If your fling morphs into a legit romance, own it. Whichever is the more senior of you should give a heads up to the boss. Yup, a little uncomfortable for sure. However, coming forward with the information shows responsibility and a willingness to be transparent.  By taking accountability for your relationship, you put both of you in a far better position to partner with your boss/company to help make it work for everyone.

And finally, though I shouldn’t need to say it, do your best to avoid one night stands and married people. It typically results in a complete mess. Is that really worth jeopardizing your career for?  Think with your head, my friends.

Christina Luconi is Chief People Officer for Rapid7. Follow her on Twitter: @peopleinnovator.

I had a great conversation with James Glover, CEO and Co-Founder of Coherent Path about his affinity for startup life and his latest venture.

A five-time entrepreneur, Glover and his co-founder Greg Leibon, decided to use the foundational principles of one of their previous companies and apply it in a new scenario: struggling retailers who are trying to keep up with the changes brought about by digital behemoths like Amazon.

Glover’s third company, Memento, was a fraud-detecting software business that helped large financial institutions save millions of dollars in annual losses due to theft and fraud. The software was able to predict fraudulent behavior.  While it was a fulfilling challenge to take on, the reality was that there wasn’t a large addressable market to keep Glover engaged in pursuing as an independent business and therefore had a successful exit with the sale to FIS.

Following the exit, he took two-and-a-half years off (but “off” is taken lightly, he actually started another startup in that time) while his co-founder Leibon, a mathematician, spent time developing the math needed to build a new software business.

“We love this idea of modeling a customer’s journey,” said Glover. “In the case of Memento we were trying to detect counterfeits and we decided to think about applying it on the revenue side of the equation.”

“We believed we had an analytical toolset to help retail, who is under duress and help them make the transition in a painful period to thrive again,” Glover further explained.

Coherent Path is an email marketing company that focuses on bringing in customer data to help their clients increase revenue. Coherent Path works with iconic American brands including L.L. Bean, Neiman Marcus, and Staples to help them predict their customer’s behavior online.

Glover and Leibon were able to attract many of the employees who were part of building Memento to join them at Coherent Path. Glover shared that taking responsibility for measurable ROI helped to keep former employees interested in working with him again.

“It’s easier to attract talent when you take responsibility for that last mile and you say, ‘I am accountable and responsible for the success that is generated with my product,’” the CEO said. “I think people are really attracted that kind of startup.”

Glover also attributes that this approach impacts the scalability of a startup as a measurable success is more repeatable to bring and repeat at another organization.

When it comes to adding to the team, Glover looks for people who are, “hungry, humble and smart, we prioritize those virtues above everything else.”

Experience isn’t as much of factor for being hired at Coherent Path. For example, the head of the services group has a Ph.D. in structural engineering, hasn’t worked at a software company and his last job was working on a nuclear power plant. While it may seem that his experience is out of left-field, his focus and intelligence is an asset for many of their customer engagements with retail marketers.

“We were the only ones fishing in that pond for that talent,” Glover said. “That’s a competitive advantage from our perspective. Look in places where other people aren’t looking.”

Glover shared a number of other examples of employees with a variety of backgrounds and how that diversity of experience is translating really well into this market. While it takes additional training to get these employees up to speed on the language of the market, Glover says that the upside has been enormous. He’s selecting individuals who are hungry enough to make an impact and humble enough to make a career change.

His advice to entrepreneurs - if you see your customer’s success as your own – you’re much more likely to be a success yourself.