The email is outdated. In its closest incarnation, e-mail It dates back to 1965— a time when computers were the size of elephants and only a few nerds accessed them regularly — and the type of email we recognize today dates back to the early 1970s.
Since then, email has become a staple of modern life, revolutionizing all of our personal and professional communication (not to mention evolving into Spam hose And distract hell from us). And while Kids hate email And you generally prefer to communicate using almost any other tool, there’s one place where email remains king: the office.
Companies love email, and if you’re looking for a job, you’ll use email a lot. But you should be careful, because the email address you use says something about you to the hiring managers.
Email can advertise how much you know the Internet
Your age is one of the easiest “news” your email can provide to recruiters and hiring managers. If you use an AOL.com address, everyone will assume you’re not just an older person (most AOL.com users today are over 50 years old), but an older person who is not very familiar with the Internet. The same can be said for Hotmail email addresses (or an Outlook.com address, which is what Microsoft switched to old Hotmail addresses back in 2013).
For some people, keeping an old AOL.com address is easy; For others, it’s nostalgic — for many people of a certain age, AOL.com was their first ever email address and they’re reluctant to get rid of it. even exist An older Apple address Like yourname@me.com or yourname@icloud.com gives an idea of your vintage.
It is clearly illegal for hiring managers to discriminate against you because of your age, and commenting on an outdated email address is not any reliable indicator of your abilities. But everyone has unintended bias, so why give them a reason to deprecate your app? Keep your old address for personal use and Create a Gmail account For everything else (better yet, create specific email to find work).
Email can indicate immaturity
Many of us created our first email address in our youth. My first email was “Linknull” for reasons I can no longer adequately explain (an inside joke I’m sure is now lost in the sands of time). And if you’re a teen or young adult when you set up your first email address, there’s a non-zero chance that it contains an off-color reference, an inside joke, an old pop culture reference, or the numbers 420 or 69.
It should be obvious, but using an email like “bongwater69@gmail.com” will give companies a bad first impression. Don’t assume that your joke or reference is too obscure or sophisticated no one in the business world will understand – everyone was 16-year-olds, and the corporate world is full of people who fly under the radar.
Email can indicate a lack of sophistication
Things become standards for a reason. You may despise Google as a company (for being a company Privacy nightmare, for example), but Gmail has become the true email address neutralizer. Using an old email like AOL.com or a weird email from your school days could mean that you’re unable to switch email addresses or that you don’t know how they look – or that you have other options. In today’s world full of technology, implanting the idea that you can’t master something as easy as creating a Gmail account is not a good move when trying to get someone to pay you.
Use an appropriate email address to search for a job
There is a time and place for that title to reflect your age, personality, and situation — but the job search is not. Your email address is a frontal aspect of your identity, and while an old (or odd) email won’t necessarily disqualify you from being considered for a job, there aren’t many good reasons to take a chance.
“Writer. Friendly troublemaker. Lifelong food junkie. Professional beer evangelist.”