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Does Using an AOL Email Address Suggest You're a Tech Dinosaur?
Nerval's Lobster writes: Despite years of layoffs and tumbling net worth, AOL seemed to get a new lease on life this week when Verizon bought it for $4.4 billion. But even if AOL's still alive, using an AOL email address has long been seen as a way of signaling that you're stuck in the 1990s. A recent analysis of Dice data found that a mere 1.8 percent of those registering for the site used an AOL address, versus 55 percent for Gmail. For the past several years, Websites from Gizmodo to Lifehacker have all declared that still using an AOL email address is counterproductive, to put it mildly. But is that actually true? Do the people in your life and work actually care whether you use AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, or a custom address, or is the idea of 'email bias' an overblown myth?
I use AOL.com and Yahoo.com email addresses to screen people for job interviews. If you put it on your resume, know that you will not receive a call back for a tech related job.
Long time AOLers have been promoted to 'tech dinosaur' from 'king of the chumps'.
AOL always sucked, There were always better alternatives. Always.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
From their marketing:
Unlimited storage, 25 MB of photo and video attachments, advanced spam filters, virus protection
I have no idea if that means 25MB per email or total for your mailbox. I'd hope it was the former. They support POP3 or IMAP.
Their current webmail client seems to be somewhat OK (if not cloned outright from Google and then had banner ads slapped in) - screenshot is over 2 years old:
http://venturebeat.com/2012/07...
I don't think it means they're leading edge in any way, but they're not lagging behind nearly as much as I thought they were.
I do work in tech recruitment. But also I don't provide a persons contact details to a company until they have already had a first stage interview. So a persons email address isn't available to the company as a selection criteria.
When I am determining whether I will represent someone to a company I care about their work experience, what they have done, and who they have done it for. I then interview them to determine whether I think the culture will be a fit.
My experience is that often in technical spaces people can be very unaware of how certain things may portray them. People put photos on their CV, they put their marital status, how many kids they have, where the attend church, whole paragraphs about their hobbies, all sorts of weird things. Quite often the more techie they are the weirder the stuff they put on their CV.
Part of my role is to help people portray their skills and experience in the way that will get them an interview. From where I sit, if having an @aol address is a bad thing, it ranks very very low on the list of things that will cause you a problem.
Reason for leaving should NEVER be stated on a CV. It can always be misconstrued no matter what you write. "moved for a better opportunity" "approached by old manager" " poached by agent" no matter what there will be someone who reads that negatively. About the only thing that is ok is "Contract / Project completed"
If you are asked in an interview what the reasons for leaving were then you should treat it exactly the same way you treat the "So what are your weaknesses question" give them an answer which doesn't give them a reason to discount you and if you can manage it spin it into a quasi-positive.
If it was the case that your boss was a wanker and you had to get out, spin it into something like "I had spent a decent length of time there and I believe I accomplished all that I was going to. I felt that it was the right time for me to look for new opportunities and hence here I am. In particular I am keen to work on (whatever they just told you about)."
Nothing there is a lie. If your boss was a jerk you probably weren't going to go any further in that role.