Appearing physically flawless, the striking young woman had achieved something that most of her peers only dream about: acknowledgment as the most beautiful and talented woman in her state. Some probably wouldn’t have even known who Ms. Prejean was until her infamous interview on Larry King where she continuously referred to him as “inappropriate.” Larry certainly asks tough questions, but I feel he’s never inappropriate (IMHO).

Unfortunately, there was more to it than physical beauty; a woman in her position was expected to exemplify certain moral standards as well.

In this, she failed.

A self-professed Christian and defender of “traditional family values,” Ms. Carrie Prejean’s carefully manufactured persona began to crumble almost from the beginning. During the beauty pageant at which she was crowned Miss California, she acknowledged that while she herself believed marriage should be between a man and a woman, she also thought that it was “… great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage.”

Yet later, she appeared in an ad advocating that the right to marry be denied to gays and lesbians. This made her the darling of anti-gay-marriage elements in the US … until the nude photos began to surface.Yikes!

Even then, she defended herself by saying the photos were nothing more than a job she had been hired to do as a professional model – adding that she was “young and naïve” at the time the photos were taken.

Then came the sex video, which has been described as “too racy” to post on the Internet (really?).

Needless to say, her relationship with conservative Christian groups has been tarnished, and Ms. Prejean’s fifteen minutes of fame is probably over.

What can jobseekers learn from Ms. Prejean’s mistakes?

Certainly there are many lessons here that we might apply to our own jobs and careers.

The most important one however is about truth and consistency. Those of us who are inconsistent between what we preach and what we truly believe will ultimately be called out as hypocrisy, and this will ultimately cause employers and co-workers to lose respect and trust in us.

If you don’t believe it, don’t say it and don’t pretend to live it.

Remember the words of William Shakespeare, who wrote in Hamlet:: “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”