Devil's in the Details

According to a new survey published in April's HR Magazine, your email address may influence whether or not you are called for a job interview.

Think about it. When you apply for a job online, your email address, noted just south of your name and address, is one of the first things an HR manager sees. Do you think an HR manager might red flag a resume with the email address DumbBlond@emailaddress.net or SatansChild@xyz.edu? Wouldn’t you take this into consideration if you were hiring a new employee? 

Researchers at Minnesota State University asked an even better question in a new study called, “Should You Hire BlazinWeedClown@Qmail.com?” They looked at whether a relationship exists between a person’s email address and how he or she scored on a pre-employment test which measures intelligence, professionalism, conscientiousness and work-related experience. 

They rated email addresses as workplace-appropriate, inappropriate or questionable for 30,000 job seekers applying in 2010 for full- and part-time, entry-level, and non-management positions with a large U.S. manufacturer and found some pretty interesting results. 

• Cutesy and inspirational addresses and those with a money theme scored slightly lower on the test than typical applicants.
• People whose addresses were rated “appropriate” scored higher in conscientiousness, professionalism and work-related experience than those with “questionable” addresses.
• People whose addresses were rated “questionable” scored higher in conscientiousness, professionalism and work-related experience than those with “inappropriate” addresses.
• People whose addresses were rated “inappropriate” because of themes or references to sex, aggression, demonic interests, drugs, toughness or criminal behavior scored lower on professionalism, conscientiousness and work-related experience than the other applicants. 

Clearly the message for you if you’re in job search is to assess your email address and make sure it’s appropriate. 

When it comes to selecting your email address, you want to make it really easy for the employer to connect with you. If they’re reviewing your resume on paper (and therefore can’t use a hyperlink or electronically copy your email address) make sure you keep these things in mind as well:

• When you use the number 1 and the letter l, in some fonts it can be difficult to differentiate. It’s the same thing with zero and the letter O.
• When you use an underscore between words and there’s hyperlink underline, the underscore can sometimes disappear.
• Keep it short. Nobody has time to type a long, crazy string of letters and numbers. Plus, the more characters you use, the greater the chance for typing errors. 

The bottom line is that the most professional email address is a variation of your name like Peter.Smith@emailaddress.net. If you have a common name and you want to add numbers to differentiate yourself, ah, don’t use the year of your birth, Baby Boomers. 

So what does your email address say about your intelligence, professionalism and conscientiousness? Do you have to make a change, ChunkyMonkey1959@emailaddress.net? 

Christy Suerth

Your Neighbor and Career Coach