You’ve written a fantastic CV and covering letter (or even had them professionally written for you), your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date and fully optimised to reflect your current job search, your approach is focused and targeted, and yet you’re still not getting invited to interview.
Sound familiar? Believe it or not, your email address could be talking you out of a job.
Why? These reasons could be the big three:
#1 Your email address is inappropriate
As a professional CV writer, I see A LOT of email addresses every week and many stand out for the wrong reasons.
A surprising number of people use a personal email address that they’ve had for years on their job application, but these addresses are often highly inappropriate for job hunting. Email addresses beginning with names such as ‘pussycat69@….’, ‘lagerboy@….’, ‘ladykiller75@….’ or ‘iamawesomehireme@….’ all invite people to make judgements about your appearance, behaviour, or attitudes before they’ve even read your CV.
Even an email address that uses your favourite fictional character – ‘anastasiasteele@….’, ‘buffygirl@….’ or ‘walterwhite@….’ – makes a statement about your interests and personality. This invites a reaction from your target employer – they may relate to the statement, or even dislike it.
Also, using a personal email address that includes your birth year gives away a personal detail that you may not have wanted to disclose until your interview.
In my experience, it’s better to leave personal email addresses off your application form and opt for something that includes your first and last names or a form of them at least, e.g. firstname.lastname@…..‘ or ‘initiallastname@….’
#2 Your email address is outdated
Having read a lot of articles including this one on this topic and spoken to a number of employers, it would appear that certain domains are considered to be behind the times. This particularly relates to Hotmail, Yahoo!, and AOL.
Although some employers won’t think this way, there are others who will automatically reject people with a Hotmail, Yahoo!, or AOL email address, taking it as a sign that the candidate is resistant to change and possibly not tech savvy enough to create a newer, more relevant email address.
This perhaps seems unfair because Hotmail is still considered one of the best free email providers, but if you have a beloved Hotmail address, consider a little online research to inform your decision on whether to keep it.
#3 You’re using your current work email address
I would always avoid sending a job application from your current work email address. To many employers this is a red flag that you are job hunting while you’re on the clock and being paid to work. If this is how you behave in your current job, how will you behave if the new company recruits you?
Even if you are job hunting on your boss’s time (and I wouldn’t recommend it), log in to your Gmail account and send your application from there.
Which email addresses create the right impression?
To ensure that your email address doesn’t get your CV blackballed, we’d always recommend setting up and using a free Gmail address or a personal domain email address.
Gmail is a good option because employers tend to see people with Gmail addresses as current and tech savvy. It’s certainly the best free email service available at the moment and you need a Gmail address to use many of Google’s other services.
There are some that would argue though that Gmail may not always be the coolest and most popular email service around (after all, look at how we’re talking about Hotmail in this article!), in which case a popular and effective alternative is to secure a personal domain email address, such as firstname@lastname.com or hello@firstnamelastname.com.
Again, employers are more likely to view people with personal domain emails as technically aware and committed to keeping their skills up-to-date.
A word of caution – employers will sometimes investigate whether the personal domain is associated with a website, running a quick search for www.yourdomain.com to see what it brings up. It’s worth making sure that if people search for your domain, they at least find a holding page or are redirected to your LinkedIn profile, even if you don’t have a website. This can actually be a positive step that helps you build your personal brand, reinforces your credentials, and shows your attention to detail.
Your email address is a brand message
Whether it’s fair or not (and many people would argue that it’s not), your email address is an unintended brand message about you that can cause people to make a snap judgement about whether your job application should be rejected outright or you should be invited to interview.
By all means keep your personal email address but our advice would be to create a separate, professional address for job hunting. It just means you can be confident that you’ve ticked another box towards securing your next position.
So, ‘fess up! Do you have a dodgy email address that you use when job hunting? Would you consider changing it or do you think it helps you stand out from the crowd? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the Comments below.
Lis McGuire
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Thanks much!This article is really helpful.I’m goint to make a new email address.If you can suggest my required fields it will be a great help.Thank you