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Is Your Email Address Holding You Back? (wsj.com)
Whether you're freelancing or on the job hunt, don't let a poorly conceived online handle limit your career prospects A quick glance at any group email confirms what recruiters and hiring managers know too well: Not everyone sheds their adolescent email addresses when they enter adulthood, instead maintaining allegiance to digital monikers based on the music, videogames and contraband they once held dear. From a report: Though rebranding yourself online can be a pain (as those who've been through the ordeal of changing their contact info know), the practice is often better for your career trajectory, said Chris Swanson, a career and college counselor at Bremerton High School in Washington state. "It's just like the idea that a handshake and eye contact makes a good impression. That's the first thing that comes across someone's desk." Even so, many Americans still use curious handles for professional exchanges, either by virtue of inertia or nostalgia or because they've never had an employer-issued handle and don't know any better -- they only know Dave Matthews rules.
[...] It might be ironic to send missives from @aol.com, but it doesn't suggest an exceedingly tech-savvy candidate. Actually, "It weirds me out," said Ms. Moore. "Why are you still using AOL? Gmail is definitely the winner." Don't even get her started on Hotmail. When updating a resume it's a good time to evaluate if an email address seems dated, especially if applying for a tech gig.
[...] It might be ironic to send missives from @aol.com, but it doesn't suggest an exceedingly tech-savvy candidate. Actually, "It weirds me out," said Ms. Moore. "Why are you still using AOL? Gmail is definitely the winner." Don't even get her started on Hotmail. When updating a resume it's a good time to evaluate if an email address seems dated, especially if applying for a tech gig.
If you're (say) enrolled in grad school part-time, use your university address. This provides automagic proof that you're in fact enrolled -- one less thing on their resume for them to need to check.
then you deserve what is coming your way: crappy jobs.
I quit using gmail for anything important about a year ago. They had gotten strident and shrill about wanting a phone number for 'recovery' if they ever choose to lock the account for whatever reason. For a few dollars a month I got a paid account. I chose Fastmail, there are other companies as well.
Recruiters are more outdated and narrow-minded than the candidates. I say itâ(TM)s time to upgrade them.
lol I used my grad school email for 4 years after graduation and only let it lapse out of disuse. I guess it implies you were probably once enrolled, but because of how i was employed it showed the wrong department.
If someone is still using an AOL email address, so what? I know of several successful business which use AOL addresses.
People like Ms. Moore who are "weirded out" by what email domain people use are the problem, not the people applying for positions. Thinking the latest and greatest is the only thing which matters has brought us the abomination which is Windows 10 or the nearly walled and welded garden of Apple.
If these people are more worried about what email address someone uses rather than their qualifications, that explains the sorry state of affairs in the tech industry today. Flash over substance.
Recruiters, being whom and what they are, are less likely to think about time lapses, more likely to see a .edu addy.
Run your own mailserver. DNS registration is cheap these days, and you can have as many different email addresses as you want.
what do i do now?
nothing to see here - move along
I put my netscape.net addy on my CV so I don't have to use my aim.com one. Nobody's ever said anything; probably being too young to remember Netscape, they think it is some new mail thing. Both addys still work fine, and I always download all my mail into TB, so as not to leave shiite on someone's server somewhere..
A domain name is $10 a year, a decent email hosting package is $5 a month, if you want to look professional and have a real, permanent email address which is not dependent on one provider, it's the only way to go.
My main email address is ou81269me@hotmail.com
and my password is Hunter2
I'm not bothering with the /s
I've actually seen something very close to that on a resume.
GMail is the "winner"? It's one of the mail "services" which forwards all your messages to the NSA, and which mines them for the commercial benefit of themselves and their partners. Don't use GMail. There are plenty of "non-outdated" email services, each with their pros and cons: Lavabit, Fastmail, GMX, etc... check the Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_webmail_providers
By the way, for maximum trolling effect, by the way, try Yandex email (Russian... join Putin's minions :-P)
"Gmail is definitely the winner."
I use the Gmail app to access my aol account, so I have the best of both worlds!
Recruiters, being whom and what they are, are less likely to think
I deleted the extra words you put at the end for you.
I've seen fairly innocuous ones that are nonetheless unique, and a quick Google search shows these people are {furries, swingers, potheads, anarchists, involved in political groups who actively oppose our line of work, survivalists, conspiracy theorists}. In general, we try to evaluate talent. If you're applying for a niche or high-end position, we'll likely look at your ... hobby ... as a novelty.
However, if you're applying for something more entry level, at the very least we will question your judgement. At worst, we might think you're a little too weird.
Ever not hired someone because of their email? Nope. Several on the above list I remember because I was all 'I can't believe I hired Bradalicious!'. It is hard, though, when forming a culture fit assessment to exclude such impressions, for good or bad.
Also, it's fun to state sometimes the background company contacts via email, is 'analrapelover1972@yahoo.com' still a good email?
People who use Gmail tell me a few things:
1. They don't care about their own privacy. It's worth less than $2/month to them.
2. They don't see any problem with one or two giant companies holding a hegemony over a large part of the Net.
3. They're lazy.
4. They're not technologically saavy.
It depends on the context, of course, but those are all the things that I think when I see "@gmail.com" (or any other "Free" email address).
I don't respond to AC's.
"Gmail is definitely the winner"... I don't know, versus what? For a tech candidate, nothing says "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing" quite like writing from a webmail address
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
On the other hand, recruiter may want to set an interview with a candidate applying from root@cia.gov
As someone who's done it for the last decade....
> will probably impress recruiters
That's not who you want to impress.
Companies do not care what you email address looks like, in general.
jack9@yourcompany.jack9.com raises many questions and many of them aren't good for you.
Feel free to find out for yourself.
why companies don't like email addresses with real names. I mean what's wrong with anonymouscoward@gmail.com
People like Ms. Moore who are "weirded out" by what email domain people use are the problem.
Call whatever you'd like the problem, we still live in a world with Ms. Moore.
There's little or nothing inherently wrong with an aol address--it works. It's email. OK.
But you can either switch to a non-AOL address, project an image that you're not tech-savvy, or explain to everyone you meet why you use an AOL address. Switching to a non-AOL address (with forwarding set up) gives you by far the best outcome/cost ratio for most business ventures.
I applied to "Big Tech Company A" using a free webmail thing from "Big Tech Company B"
and they gave me a LOT of shit about it.
I work and have worked with some well known and / or high net worth individuals, and more often then not they have an AOL address, as they started using it in the 90s and just just kept using it as they were comfortable with it, and no one ever gave them a good enough reason to switch. (these are obviously not tech industry people)
For myself I did go by a childhood nickname for many many years and it actually stuck in the workplace because I have a very common first name and we had to deconflict.
Now that I work for myself I have dropped it, and I use my personal domain with POP/IMAP on a hosting server with my website, keeping only two weeks of email on the server. Like some people here I'm not interested in having all my email exposed to the Google apparatus.
It'd be interesting to see in what light personal domains are seen in now, not that it matters or affects me at this point. (firstnamelastname.com type format) Before it was a must have piece of real estate, now many people just use a free email service such as Gmail and few people have personal websites anymore.
They'll probably think you're younger as well, which probably helps your prospects quite a bit.
We want people who aren't afraid to deviate from the pack. Every commoner out there has a GMail address. Want to stand out? Gotta make yourself different!
Firstname.Lastname.Turnipface@Gmail.com
No resume should ever be without one of these beauties.
You're welcome.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I've got about six email addresses I use currently, all for different purposes, I can't see why anyone would limit themselves to only one.
My wife still uses an AOL email address... and why the hell not?
It still works just fine; nobody has a problem reaching her - she hasn't had to make anyone change an address book in 20+ years.
She connects to it via IMAP with a real mail client, and has been doing so for at least the last 15 years, and POP3 before that.
Having an @aol.com address has zero reflection on function, form, appearance or anything else of her email... it's, after all, "just" an IMAP server. No reason to change whatsoever. What's the benefit? Believe it or not, the AOL IMAP servers are pretty stable - no more or less so than any other service. So, no technical or feature upside to doing so.... Why go through the hassle of changing?
"Also, try to have a white-sounding name," Ms. Moore added before stuffing her face with an assortment of Hostess Snack Cakes, inexpensive chocolate smearing her face as the air filled with crumbs dutifully removed by her three french toy poodles.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
job hunting purposes and never use it elsewhere. If you do, you'll find that your professional email will land on a zillion of spam lists and you'll be bothered by recruiters even years after securing a job. By keeping it separate, recruiters also won't be able to find your profiles on the Internet and possibly jeopardise your application efforts.
article screams pettiness. Can't wait to read quote from next article: "I would have hired him but he wore dark-blue."
The reality is that is pure ignorance on the interviewers part, having ancient email addresses connected to those domains often means a long history of involvement with internet, I literally only just ditched an ISP account I had used for nearly 30 years. I do many interviews and not once have I ever given a shit about their email address. However nowadays the ignorance of some interviewers probably does need to be catered for, doesn't mean you have to change anything though, just register a new domain/email address just for those situations. If you are reliant on your domain name and email address to obtain an interview you have other serious problems anyway.
stuff that matters
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
If you have half a clue, get a raspberry-pi, get a domain name, set it up as an email and Wordpress server.
Now you can project yourself as professional or personable as you want.
You can be a household or expand to a company, show family or products,
broadcast opinions, connect with others
you own it, you control it, you secure it
Go well
And I couldn't give less of a toss what the email address is.
My job is to match skillsets and personality to a role. Before sending a CV on to a company I strip contact details anyway. So the hiring company doesn't have that as a baseline. And if there is an email that I think will cost the person I advise them to create another one.
But the recommendation to change it never comes on the 2nd half of the email address. It's always the first. @aol, @hotmail, @rediffmail, who cares? Bigknockersgg@gmail.com got advised to use a different one because she was going for an HR role and the company would have to send the offer letter there.
Seriously who knows what setup people have behind the scenes anyway. An @aol might be in use simply because it is the email address that they have been giving people for the last 20 years. It could potentially all being forwards to a Gmail account anyway.
even better, make a positive tech profile with the identity you give out for a tech job search. they can get suspicious if they see no profile at all.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I use iwilleatoutyourass.cum as my email address and get lots of responses
I have my own domain name (since 1995), which is mylastname.org. I send job-seeking info from job@mylastname.org.
I send more serious job-seeking communications (ones that seems like they might actually result in employment) from myfirstname@mylastname.org.
If that's not good enough for "them" then fuck 'em, I don't want to work for them anyway.
...people were hired by their qualifications, not just the perceived propriety of their email address to the trendy.
-Styopa
So you're saying the reason I don't get any interviews is my "Locke2005@hotmale.com" email address?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
It proves nothing. I needed .edu email for some amazon promo, so I just searched Internet for .edu webmail servers and created e-mail account at some random university that had very relaxed verification for new accounts.
I do not exist on social media. You'll not find me on any "professional" sites (i.e. LinkedIn) too. In fact, you'll not see my name or personal information anywhere on the Internet at all (at least not because I put it there lol). Why would I share such critical information with anyone publicly? Because everyone else does so? Because hardly anyone cares about their privacy? Following the herd is simply dumb. Develop some common sense, people.
I've never had a problem with "not having a profile" when looking for a job.
Try going back that far.
Fuck it
Plumbers are not IT guys
On the topic of e-mail: an I the only one that finds a buiseness using a a gmail.com address as their main conract e-mail a bit of putting? I mean how hard and/or exspensive is it to get a domain and basic email hosting in 2018?
Personally, using someone's email address as some sort of metric of what kind of person owns it.. pretty stupid really. It shouldn't matter.
And if it does, or did, or will, it's not like getting a new email address is some difficult thing. They're pretty easy to come by these days. Which makes it even more worthless as a metric of what sort of person lies beyond the address.
I think this is about as useful as associating someone's street name with what sort of person they might be. It doesn't matter. At least, it shouldn't.
I run my own mailserver and have xyz@xyz.com (replace XYZ with my internet handle).
Haven't ever had a problem. Ever. At this point in my career, if I did, better they dismiss me ahead of time so I don't waste my time in their interview for a job I will surely decline.
Your Employer should not be making decisions about your chosen address. Fight back. Rise up. Smarten up.
Don't make the crowd stronger by following it.
Use gmail for throw away stuff. Proton mail is pretty cool â" and free. Plus, itâ(TM)s run by CERN scientists.
True that. Recruiters are dumbasses. Fuck em.
It's definitely a factor when deciding whom to vote for in various local elections. I'm more likely to vote for bob@bob4dogcatcher2018.com or bob@gmail.com than I am for bob@aol.com or doghumper420@hotmail.com.
how old are you, and how often do you switch jobs?
I give a few extra points to applicants that have a custom domain for their email address. It usually indicates a little more attention to detail. Once hired, those employees tend to go above and beyond versus just meeting expectations.
That way, you can still be "whateverurweirdonameyouchoose"@"whateverservicewasavailable" and still be a very professional givenname.lastname@ieeeorg
Just remeber to make a google (or some other address) to match, since the ieee email is a redirector.
this will not impress anyone for or against you, but at least transmits a modicum of "seriousnes".
If you want to transtmit your funny side, that's what the personal interests part of the CV is for, mine lists scuba diving, cycling and reading.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
A thing to remember about High Tech is that there is enormous value added.
As a result, company management can be off-the-wall-fruitcakes, following or instituting management fads and perpetrating many horrible management pathologies, yet still have enough profit left that the company can go on for years before dying, or even thrive.
Then, even if they take it down (or better yet, bail out just before their house of cards collapses), or a competitor with less pathology eats their lunch, failure in High Tech is so often not the fault of the failing that it's not a black mark. Unless how they screwed up is SO visible that it becomes a scandal (or sometimes even if it is) they can then use their experience as a qualification credit when going for their next job, beat out less pathological but more junior applicants, apply the same or even bigger and better pathologies to another, larger, company, and take it down, too. Iterate for a while and you have a successful career, are rich from cashed-in stock options, and leave a trail of devastation as a legacy.
What's true for upper management goes double for middle management and functionaries. They get to inherit both the pathologies of those above them and create more or follow fads of their own. As lower-ranking they're expected to be less competent and their foul-ups are not the subject of major business-press scandal.
Minsky divided the first three decades of computer science education into three periods of about a decade each:
1) Computer science was too new. Colleges had no idea what to teach, so they taught the wrong stuff. (Like everybody was taught how to WRITE a compiler.) A four-year degree was actually a handicap for getting a job in industry: It meant you had more that you had to UN-learn before you could learn the stuff you actually needed to know to be useful. The trick was to go ALMOST to a degree (to get access to the tools to learn and the useful skills), then get a job and drop out.
2) Colleges figured out enough about what was really needed that going all the way to a four-year degree actually made you more useful than not.
3) Colleges got into teaching a bunch of computer-science methodology fads and the degree became a slight handicap again.
There have been a few more decades since then, and a lot more fads, both in computer science and in management. About a decade back, for instance, a degree was a mandatory check-box, and no matter how experienced you were, how many patents you had, who you knew, or how hard the people running the actual department were crying for you to be hired, you couldn't get HR to process your paper without having the sheepskin, checking the box, and filling in the adjacent slot with the name of one of a handful of big-name schools.
On one hand some big-name companies are again hiring by some measure of skill and not requiring degrees, a practice that might spread. (Especially if H1Bs get restricted.) On the other, we've got the "email provider is A SIGN" fad in H.R. circles. So here we go again.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"I don't want a fucking submission from SuperMageCockLord@yourmomma.com" -- Chris Avellone
After years of using name@comcast.net among others, I'm thinking of buying a domain although the one ending in my last name is taken
Poll: What sounds better name@1lastname.com or name@lastname1.com ?
Is it even worth it I wonder since it's $ for the account renewals....
Get up!
There are plenty of email clients can handle multiple inboxes from different providers. You don't need to mix your business and personal communications together.
lol contra-banned ;]
Fuck those people demanding we all use facebook or twitter and must have a fucking google email, because who the fuck cares about privacy right? FUCK YOU!
But definitely screwed up with my handle. Why do I keep it? Because I always hope to stumble across old online friends.
This isn't hypothetical. At a prior gig I was discussed resume screening with a coworker. He indicated that he'd round-filed my resume because of my @aol.com email address. I only got an interview because of a persistent person in HR.
I'd had that email address since AOL came on CDs in magazines, but that conversation caused me to switch to gmail.
(Thanks for being honest Dave. That conversation has helped me advance my career. I am in your debt.)
Recruiters, being whom and what they are, are less likely to think
I deleted the extra words you put at the end for you.
Bored inmates being whom and what they are, are less likely to think
There, that's better.
Who uses only one e-mail address these days? Stupid article.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Beware of government agencies that use gmail addresses.
It proves something if you've got something like @yale.edu
I deleted the extra words you put at the end.
Me too!
vps sendmail (easier to configure for my needs than postfix) dovecot spam assassin milter-greylist z-push (push email, setup as exchange account) owncloud (calendar, contacts via caldav/carddav) wildcard alias my own domain name each site/provider gets its own alias via wildcard, blocked if they send spam
The butthurt is strong with this one!
I don't think so. Been using "retired-hit-man@IKnowWhereYouLive.com" for years and never had anyone say anything bad about it.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
... into n00b territory when people are discussing the professional branding value of Hotmail vs. Gmail. :-) ... etc. ... huge gap ... bladiblah@gmail/Hotmail/whatever.
It goes like this:
MyFristname@mylastname.tld, contact@mylastname.tld, etc. or contact@mydomain.tld,
Why is this even on Slashdot?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Recruiter = Person who still applies to work in a job that was replaced by computers 25 years ago and they didn't actually notice
I have a simple response to recruiters when they say :
Them : I have a great customer...
Me : No, you don't. They left it up to a relative stranger to track down leads instead of searching LinkedIn or Monster or whatever else. You have a customer who doesn't actually care enough to use Google.
Them : I have a great opportunity for you...
Me : No you don't. Companies don't use recruiters when they want serious candidates, they use recruiters when they are looking for meat. They get their serious candidates through personal networking and personal recommendations. You would never hire a candidate for a "Great opportunity" through something as anonymous as a recruiter.
Them : We're hiring 17 great people for a project...
Me : Good luck! You're attempting to build a team without any real knowledge of how they will work together as a team. You're actually throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some will stick. If you're hiring 17 more or less random people for a project, most of those people are basically just desperate and if I were there, I'd have to do all their jobs for them. You'd be better off hiring two or three known assets and have them bring their own people in. In reality, if you're hiring 17 people at once, you should actually be outsourcing the project.
There are many things to say to recruiters... my dad was a recruiter back before the Internet. Back then, to look at jobs outside of your local area, it was the only way to go. Once the web came around, recruiters were basically people who couldn't find a real job for themselves and now are trying to do it for someone else.
Recruiters are to run from. I've had a recruiter call what he thought was my current boss and say that I was looking for jobs, and can he fill my spot. Thankfully, he called a previous job, as I don't keep current stuff available.
I have nothing but horror stories about recruiters.
Again, recruiters showing the exact attitudes that causes people to just blow them off.
Why don't you have a good hard look at yourselves and realize that judging people on surface criteria is a personality failure? You complain about people not being courteous, but that doesn't give you an excuse to judge people.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Using any ISP based email... bleh
Bored inmates being whom and what they are, are less likely to think
Bored primates being whom and what they are, are less likely to think
Version 2.0
I have a specific email I use for recruitment ... better get in quick if you have a common name
first.surname.forhire@gmail.com
I think free webmails are professional enough... of course if you have anything like a common name it gets hard... I don't judge john.smith1234567 I just feel sorry for them.
What is this "your email address" ?
Singular?
Seriously?
I've got about 20 more-or-less (many just forward to the same inbox) email addresses on half as many domains. Not counting work e-mail.
Even if you don't run your own server and own a couple domains like I do, it is absolutely trivial to set up two, three, five or fifty e-mails with one or several e-mail providers. In fact, if I didn't run my own mailserver, I'd definitely do so in order to not be fucked if my e-mail provider suddenly disappears or decides to not do this business anymore, or move to a pay model and holds my e-mail history hostage.
Why in the world would anyone have only one e-mail address?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I would not employ someone with such poor judgement.
No it doesn't. Remailer @aya.yale.edu addresses are available to anyone that had any affiliation with the university. It never did me any good, nor, really, any of the alum I know.
Of course, I may just be showing my age since apparently the new kids have never heard of POP3 and can't conceive of the possibility that my wife's aol mail gets handled on my server far better than it would be on gmail's. With the added benefit of slightly less horrendous email-snooping advertising.
I mean, I'm sure there was a time when a lot of people believed it was perfectly appropriate to treat anyone without a 212 area code as a hick. But they were the naive idiots- now it's just a 10-digit number nobody sane gives a shit about.
Them : I have a great customer...
Me : No, you don't. They left it up to a relative stranger to track down leads instead of searching LinkedIn or Monster or whatever else. You have a customer who doesn't actually care enough to use Google.
When I wanted to relocate (family reasons), I didn't have any contacts in the area I wanted to relocate to -- I worked with a great recruiter and had an interview scheduled for my current job before the job was even posted on the job boards.
Them : I have a great opportunity for you...
Me : No you don't. Companies don't use recruiters when they want serious candidates, they use recruiters when they are looking for meat. They get their serious candidates through personal networking and personal recommendations. You would never hire a candidate for a "Great opportunity" through something as anonymous as a recruiter.
When my company needed to grow, we quickly ran out of personal recommendations and though we posted to the usual places, sifting through the hundreds of unqualified resumes got to be a chore. The company had worked with a recruiter off and on for over 10 years, and she sourced us some great candidates (including me).
Recruiters are kind of like travel agents -- you don't always need one, but when you do, a good one is worth their weight in gold.
They're the same kind of addresses. What makes a difference is if you're using someone else's domain or your own, and in case it's someone else's domain, if it's work/education or a freemailer. Gmail is the new AOL, so that's just ageism.
* Expert Sexchange
If you have some IT knowledge, so everybody here, use your own domain. If you use email professionally, use your own domain.
Costs about 10USD per year. I do not get it if a local bakery uses a hotmail adresss on their store window,or if a consultant jands me a bussiness card with a gmail adress.
You still can set it up so that Google can read your emails if you want.
And that first oart? If you have any IT knowledge and the address is holding you back, blame yourself.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
citing privacy concerns.
I don't care if people don't think that's hip, it's even part of my signature:
"I moved away from Gmail, you should too."
The gold comparison for good recruiters is apt. To find one, you have to shovel a lot of crap.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I mean, I basically use @live.com handle, which is basically Hotmail, and I find it vastly superior to GMail, especially since they don't scan my email correspondence to shove ads my throat. Would I get put in the category of "Don't let me get started with people with Hotmail handles" ?!? Outlook mail is by far the winner these days. The new GMail revamp is a laggy, buggy mess of a Javascript crap piled on one another.
"having ancient email addresses connected to those domains often means a long history of involvement with internet"
To you and me that shows experience, lessons learnt and a knowledge of what's good to be repeated and what's bad to be avoided.
To many recruiters and HR drones it raises flags of "this person's old", "they may know more than me", "they're probably prepared to be assertive and not just accepting", "they'll want an decent income"...
An "ancient" email address is great for nostalgia - I still keep a couple myself - but I can appreciate how it can negatively affect job hunting [it shouldn't but it does].
On the other hand, you could probably discern what I think about other businesses by the e-mail address that I give them: if I give you my gmail address, it means that I'm not that concerned about/don't highly value your business; my 'professional' address (a facade redirecting to proton mail) is used for most business purposes; my personal domain address is reserved for a very few special cases. If I give you a hotmail or yahoo address (yes I still keep them going) I really regard it as a throwaway and am not really likely to follow up. :)
Personal e-mail is a different story
Depends on the school. Mine axed all emails within two weeks of acceptance to graduate, not graduation. This made applying for jobs using the Uni address impossible.
You seem to be implying that ISPs and webmail providers are not parsing your emails and collating data on you. That would be nice.
Unencrypted email is not, and has never been, a secure channel. If you want to impress your prospective employer in this field, provide your public encryption key (not on a USB pen). That works with any mailbox.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Especially CyberCoders.
"use your university address."
Dammit, you mean I didn't get the job because I used my old Big_Dick6521@hotmail.com address?
Them : I have a great customer... Me : No, you don't. They left it up to a relative stranger to track down leads instead of searching LinkedIn or Monster or whatever else. You have a customer who doesn't actually care enough to use Google.
Alternatively, I have a team of 4 developers (including me) and our hr person is basically just a part time employee that processes payroll. I have neither the time or the aptitude to spend days trawling through LinkedIn or whatever you think I should be doing with my time instead of building my product. However I have a reasonable amount of cash and I'm willing to pay someone else to do the web trawling.
Them : I have a great opportunity for you... Me : No you don't. Companies don't use recruiters when they want serious candidates, they use recruiters when they are looking for meat. They get their serious candidates through personal networking and personal recommendations. You would never hire a candidate for a "Great opportunity" through something as anonymous as a recruiter.
In an ideal world, absolutely. Certainly, most of the best candidates I've interviewed were people I've interviewed from hackernews. However, the worst CVs were also from there. In my experience, you want to give yourself the best openings to get the right candidate and that means recommendations, meet ups, hackernews and recruiters.
Them : We're hiring 17 great people for a project... Me : Good luck! You're attempting to build a team without any real knowledge of how they will work together as a team. You're actually throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping some will stick. If you're hiring 17 more or less random people for a project, most of those people are basically just desperate and if I were there, I'd have to do all their jobs for them. You'd be better off hiring two or three known assets and have them bring their own people in. In reality, if you're hiring 17 people at once, you should actually be outsourcing the project.
Any project that starts with hiring 17 people will probably never get delivered. A lot of these kind of postings, at least where I live (London), are for contract bodies at banks, which is generally well-paid but incredibly boring maintenance work, so take that or leave it
One of the problems with your theory that you should be able to build a large team from recommendations is this though. I have a team of 3 other people. They are the best people I have worked with over the last 3 or 4 years - that is why I brought them in. Who are they going to have worked with in that period that is outside of the same group? You need a way of bringing in new blood
it's just another drive to get people to think they have to switch to gmail or noone will take them seriously.
This just reminds me of the names people would use on AIM. In particular I was always confused by the vast number of: xX_aZn_SenSAtion_goku_Xx variants. I asked a friend why she had her xx azn whatever name and her response was something along the lines of: "It's for my Asian pride, why wouldn't I or anyone else want to display that???" I remember just being really confused as to why it was that important.... and still why it needed the xX's in it... Plus the pride being in being "Asian" rather than Japanese.
Wages in London seem incredibly low. I see "senior" positions advertised at £50k. Maybe some people are willing to put up with several of hours of hell commuting a day, but not me.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I have my old internet "handle" based accounts, and I've had several variations on them over the years. I still use one of those for communicating with people who I know well -- and who I no longer have to worry about impressing... because they already know me well enough to not really care about my online handle, anymore.
I also have one "non-handle" account, and I use that anytime that a first impression actually matters, such as (obviously) interviewers and/or recruiters. That account is based upon my real name, which means it matches up nicely with what they'll see on my resume. I think it works pretty decently for that purpose.
The only note-able disadvantage is, my "real name" account has a rather peculiar set of problems, which I've somehow never experienced with any of my other accounts: Some other idiot with a vaguely similar name thinks that it's their account, and keeps using it when they fill in their contact information with various companies. And I don't necessarily think that they're just attempting to "black hole" junk advertisers... I've received confirmation messages for house purchases and rentals, vacation reservations, flight confirmations... you name it. Disturbingly, many of the companies which send me information for this other "non-me" person, never even bother to perform basic verification of the address before sending personal information to it.
And before you ask: yes, I've tried to get non-me to stop; they don't seem to care, or they're just too oblivious to understand the nature of the problem. They've even opened a Roku account using that e-mail, which I've attempted to cancel on several occasions -- but apparently, any device which has been activated on a Roku account can reactivate that account at any time, even without access to the e-mail account and without the Roku account password... from which I learned that if someone else somehow gains access to your Roku account (with or without your permission) they'll basically have access to it for life, on your dime. If I were malicious, I could add any of Roku's additional-fee services to non-me's account and connect any of my own devices to it for free, and they could do absolutely nothing about it -- except of course cancel the credit card that they used to sign up, which would no doubt result in creditors harassing them for non-payment, at some point. (I'll never be signing up for Roku myself, that's for sure!)
But yeah... I guess I just have to chalk that up as another one of those things that boggles my mind, but simply can't be helped. It's still worth it to maintain that e-mail account, for those brief periods every five or ten years when I'm interviewing for my next job.
In London? The total package here is 150k for a senior dev and I recently had a developer poached away from me (after a verbal agreement after the interview) for £200k. The going rate for a node/python developer is at least £600 a day (£120k pa assuming 200 days) and a java/c# guy in a bank can be £750 plus (£150k pa assuming 200 days). I've been turned down by a grad for offering £60k a year.
Having said that, I won't hire people that live more than an hour away as I want them to keep a reasonable work life balance and that is not possible spending 3-4 hours on a train every day.
This seems like common sense, but glad they are telling kids this in case they didn't already figure it out.
Funny to see Bremerton High School in a headline on Slashdot though..
Anything a millenial says I ignore. "Wierded me out".
Whatever, kid.
Them : We're hiring 17 great people for a project...
Me: You're tolling for resumes to attach to an RFP response and the jobs don't even exist yet. If I'm lucky you'll call me back in three months, but until then I have a mortgage to pay and kids to feed. Oh, and seven other recruiters called me today for the same job.
If a prospective employer is going to be so fucking superficial as to judge me by my email address, and not stop to consider that the legacy @aol or @hotmail address is because I have spent *decades* emailing family, friends, and business contacts from there, then I definitely want to know that right up front in the interview so I can opt out and not waste my time pursuing a job where the management clearly does not posses proper critical thinking skills.
I crack myself up.
Seriously though - I do see email addresses from people trying to cross the private to professional line that are rather unprofessional. Sure, "ILoveKitties" is cute and on the edge, but I've seen some that are distressing.
Please let the "Personal Branding" people disappear.
...where do you think gold comes from?
Supernovae.
Next question.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've been online since some of you were barely in kindergarden, and I have two email addresses: a personal one, and a "professional" one, and never the twain shall meet.
I always use my hotmail address. All the junk goes there. If I'm applying for a job I'm applying with many different companies. I don't know what they're going to do with my information. On my actual address for family and friends I get hardly any spam. This is why. I'm very selective about who I give that out to. If a company isn't going to hire me because I protect my privacy they've probably saved both of us a lot of time anyway.
I just hack my way into the company's server and advertise myself as postmaster@companyname.com. That way they know I'm capable and I've even saved them the bother of setting up an account for me.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Currently, hotmail is just one more domain of outlook.com so technologically it is not behind the leaders (the leaders being gmail and outlook)
And if the portion of your dress before the @ sign is not something silly, then really there is no reason (within the context of this post) to not continue to use hotmail
I still use my hotmail, although no as my primary address and I think the fact that I haven't closed my account in 23 years, plus the fact that I chose a name that doesn't read unprofessional in the first place are actually positive things a person can infer from that address.
AOL was THE way to connect to the internet for a lot of Americans at a certain point. Hearing the modem audibly dial out and make a connection was fucking awesome. Nothing weird about what most likely amounts to just being old. I mean if the guy you were interviewing was 50 and flirting with you and it weirded you out, sure, then be weirded out a bit if you weren't into him; but, I dunno, nothing weird about seeing a "@aol.com"
If you think gmail is the kewl kid on the block and aol and hotmail are out of fashion, then, I dunno. I don't really equate my choice of e-mail provider with fashionable trends. I equate my e-mail provider with a company that provides me with a service I want. I also take into consideration the level of ethics upheld by the company, their business practices, and whether or not I will be respected as a customer by the service I get. I don't like the fact gmail scans my e-mails so it can deliver adds to me. Some might say that's creepy; but, it's not creepy to me. I just don't like that shit.
someone told me that once, i felt discriminated like digitally challenged and excluded as if i were a guy with a facepiercing ... think i should have sued her ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
As a contracted Programming Lead, I have a max salary $150K-$200K. The bosses that have slipped what my employer was paying my recruiters have shown 50%-100% markups on my hourly rate. If I were to be a successful recruiter with ten placed programming leads and I took home a third of the 50% markup, I'd be making $250K-$500K. I do not have the personality to deal with human interactions very well, I could not do the constant rejection and constant reaching-out recruiters do. But don't think they drive worse cars than their clients. At least, not the successful ones. There's a reason why there are so many recruiters still, in this day and age of Monster and Linked In.
Am I the only one who can create multiple Email addresses? I use a separate Email account entirely for most professional activity. Why mix the professional side and the personal side?
Some company emails are pretty shockingly awful too. /or double-barrel names, meaning their email runs to 40+ characters.
I deal a lot with Siemens in the healthcare sector. all their employees email addresses are 1st-name(dot)surname(at)Siemens -healthineers.com
Which isn't great when some employees have long names and
- and always raises the question 'what is a 'healthineer'? and did I spell it right? does it have hyphens? is it about hearing and hearing aids? Or is it an implant in-ear?
My kids have a college issued email that is just their initial and surname with a (dot) 4- letter acronym on the end. - Much easier and looks much more professional.
> Facebook has nothing to do with your own security.
HA. Hehh. Haha. Ok. Seriously though, do you believe this? If you use facebook, your digital breadcrumb trail is much more marked. That, alone, is security-impactful. Let alone "using facebook" normally means allowing FB javascript and 3rd party resource requests and running a FB app.
You have a 5-digit ID, you've been here over a decade. The phrase "attack surface" should mean something to you by now. Using FB requires using it, that surface grows. The phrase "crowbar security" should mean something. Using FB means leaking when/where you are, and if you don't see how that's security-impactful, go play tourist in Ukraine.
I prefer people that are smart enough not to use email that scans what you are saying to market to you and sell you ads. Whatâ(TM)s so special about Gmail? If you are in Solicin Valley it seems to be a prerequisite. If you were a real technologist (like me) you would be running your own mail server and domain. Itâ(TM)s not hard. Thatâ(TM)s professional and shows you understand technology.
And apparently Slashdot does not know what an apostrophe is. /.