Bad career advice is easily found on the Internet and in print.

The dawn of a New Year is when a lot of this bad advice rears its ugly head as people who dont know what they are talking about try to convince you about the 10 hottest jobs this year and how easy it is to work from home or why you should quit your fulltime job and become self employed.

Usually this advice comes from people who dont actually do what they suggest. They simply suggest it.

Here is the worst advice Ive heard that you need to think twice about before following:

1. Listening to people who talk about the hottest jobs of the coming year. What about next year? Are these jobs going to be hot then, too? And who decided they are hot anyways? Chasing the hottest jobs of the year is like believing someone who tells you they have a stock tip that no one else knows about. Dont worry about finding a hot job. Concern yourself with finding a job or preferably a career that benefits you long-term.

2. Listening to people who tell you what job youd be good at. Certainly there is nothing wrong with consulting with people you trust family and friends for example when accepting career advice. But at the end of the day, you need to find a job you want, not a job that other people think you want. Its your career, not theirs. Just because they like their job and just because its going well for them, doesnt mean it will work for you as well.

3. Listening to people who suggest you should consider being self-employed. Ive been self employed since 2000 and its not easy. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldnt they? Being self-employed is not for everyone either. If you need supervision and direction, if you need a guaranteed salary and health care benefits, if you have to work with other people and if you need other people to push you to get you motivated, self-employment is probably not for you. And if you like getting paid for statutory holidays and vacation time, you should continue to work for someone else.

4. Listening to people who suggest you should work from home. Some people talk about working from home like its a magical cure. What exactly do you plan on doing from home that other people will pay you for? Just like being self-employed, working from home doesnt mean anything unless you have actually identified something you can do from home that will pay you while also establishing that you are capable of working from home. Working from home by yourself is far different from working in an office environment with other people, trust me.

5. Listening to people who tell you how easy and profitable it is to work online. One thing Ive discovered is that many of the people who make the most money on the Internet are people who get paid to tell other people how to make money on the Internet. Ive read far too many articles and training programs that make it sound like earning money on the Internet is simply a matter of opening up a search engine account and bidding on some keywords to sell other peoples products and sitting back and watching the money roll in. Maybe thats how it used to be a few years ago, but thats not what its like today for most people. Working online can be lonely and frustrating if you dont know where to turn for expert advice especially when you start losing money. Sure, you can pay for other people to tell you what to do but that just proves my above point about how the people making the money are those telling others what to do.

The best advice you can take is to trust your gut and use common sense when considering career advice from other people.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

If it were as easy as they say it is, everyone would be doing it.