Know What Your Email Address Says About You
Posted in Etiquette, Technology on 19. Jan, 2010
The email address you choose–and even the provider–can send strong signals. Do you know which messages you’re conveying? Jason Fitzpatrick at Lifehacker brought up several good points in a recent post. His general premise is this:
“Like your clothing, your hair style, and your manner of speaking, your email address is part of your personal image. Certainly it’s a type of prejudice that a hiring manager might look over you because you have an “antiquated” email address or a “stupid” username, but that’s not entirely different than a hiring manager being unimpressed that you showed up to a job interview sans a neck tie. Sure it might be unimportant or silly to you and you might say “I wouldn’t want to work at a company that uptight anyhow,” but it’s worth taking into consideration because whether or not a prejudice—big or small!—is fair or reasonable, it is still out there.”
A couple of major points:
- The username you select is vastly more important than the provider you use. Firstname.lastname@aol.com is preferred to and more respectable than sexkitten2010@aol.com—cutesy, offensive, or unprofessional nicknames are big mistakes.
- Domains are important, especially in technology-related fields. An AOL address might be just as serviceable as any other address when it comes to sending and receiving mail but to most people in tech fields it says “Hi. I’m from 1996. What is this internet you speak of?”
I don’t have much to add since Jason does a pretty good job of covering the topic. The internet continues to blur the line between the personal and professional spheres, but we still have a certain level of control over the image we project in each. The choice of an email address is as a good a place to start as any.
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