Your Old Email Address Is Hindering Your Career Prospects

Email is outdated. In its earliest incarnation, email dates back to 1965 — a time when computers were the size of elephants and only a handful of nerds had regular access to them — and the kind of email we know today dates back to the early 1970s. .

Since then, email has become a staple of modern life, revolutionizing all of our personal and professional communications (not to mention it has turned into a spam hose and distracted us ). And while kids hate email and generally prefer to communicate using just about 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 have to be careful because the email address you use says something about you to hiring managers.

Email can announce how savvy you are on the internet

One of the simplest “messages” your email can offer to recruiters and hiring managers is your age. If you use an AOL.com address, everyone will assume that you are not only an elderly person (most AOL.com users are over 50 today), but also an elderly person who is not very smart. about the internet. The same can be said for Hotmail email addresses (or the Outlook.com address that Microsoft converted old Hotmail addresses to back in 2013).

Some people find it easier to keep the old AOL.com address; for others, it’s nostalgia – for many people of a certain age, AOL.com was their first email address, and they don’t want to get rid of it. Even having an older Apple address such as yourname@me.com or yourname@icloud.com gives clues to your crop.

Obviously, it’s illegal to discriminate against hiring managers because of your age, and using an old email address isn’t a reliable indicator of your abilities. But everyone has unconscious biases, so why give them a reason to judge your app? Keep your old address for personal use and set up a Gmail account for everything else (better yet, create a dedicated email address for job hunting).

Email may indicate immaturity

Many of us created our first email address when we were young. My first email was “Linknull” for reasons I can no longer adequately explain (I’m sure it was an inside joke, now lost in the sands of time). And if you were a teenager or young adult when you created your first email address, there’s a non-zero chance that it contains a lewd reference, an inside joke, an outdated pop culture reference, or the numbers 420 or 69.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 so obscure or cutting edge that no one in the business world will understand it – everyone was 16 years old once, and the corporate world is full of people eluding the radar.

Email may indicate a lack of sophistication

Things become standards for a reason. You may despise Google as a company (for being a privacy nightmare , for example), but Gmail has become truly email neutral. Using old email like AOL.com or weird email from your school days can show people that you can’t switch email addresses, or don’t know what it looks like, or don’t know you have other options. In today’s tech-soaked world, planting the idea that you can’t master something as simple as setting up a Gmail account is not a good move when you’re trying to convince someone to pay you.

Use the correct email address to search for a job

There is a time and place for this address to reflect your age, personality, and attitude, but not your job search. Your email address is an important aspect of your personality, and while an old (or weird) email address doesn’t necessarily disqualify you from being considered for a job, there aren’t many good reasons to take the risk.