Oh, how I wish I was.
This actually did not happen to me, I just happened to ask my peer why he walked out of the interview with such a strange look on his face. He was rather demoralized by the whole affair, considering that she passed the first stage of interviews (!) in such a state.
I’ve only started doing interviews recently, so the others in the list (all mine) are pretty tame. No real horror stories yet – at least not from interviewing. From other areas involving employees, sure…
He can use it all he wants, but I myself have doubts that he will be considered for being hired. I stated before I think the whole email thing was more situational. Are you suggesting a star trek reference, and a sexual fetish reference are equally dubious? I think in most circumstances making a claim that one is an “assman” is inappropriate, unless he’s around friends, or on an online sex chat room. The guy isn’t just expressing what his interests are, he’s either blatantly showing how oblivious he is to what is or isn’t considered offensive or wildly inappropriate, or the guy is being an ass and is just trying to offend someone. This isn’t just something you don’t want to write on an application, it’s something most people wouldn’t even say outside of their own homes, and is a much bigger taboo than a pop culture reference. For this reason I consider the two different.
Be that as it may, two people in this thread so far have brought up cases where they’re media inspried email addresses were smiled upon. I’m willing to bet there’s plenty more employers with similiar attitudes where they come from.
Because I was once hired at a resteraunt with my current email address. And what’s wrong with blending job with fun? The most stress free workplaces I’ve been in were the places where you could spray co-workers with spray bottles, tell jokes, and have a good time as long as you got the job done and provided great service to customers. If you ask me, a waiter with an interesting personality, and who appears to enjoy doing what she gets paid to do, goes a long way with me and warrants an extra dollar or two to the tip.
Just because you don’t care for funky email addresses hardly means I’ll be working the same jobs I am now, twenty years later. Not every employer has the same priorites as you do, or care about the same things, in the same way. I think you’re missing my point. If someone refuses to even consider calling me in for an interview based soley on my email address, then that’s all the more reason to keep it. In my opinion, judging the potential of someone trying to get a job on an address (unless it’s esspecialy provacative) rather than experience, hobbies, volunteering experience, and the answers in response to all the other questions that are asked, is excercising bad judgment. I don’t care if an employer doesn’t care I’m doing this, it’s irrelevant. What’s important is that I’ve removed a portion of employers that I probably wouldn’t get along with, from the pool of people that may hire me.
Truth be told, I don’t even like my current email addy, and the only reason I’m keeping it is because too many people know me by that name to change it now, including several people I’ve lost contact with.
Unbelievable? Nope, I was interviewing.
What went unspoken: “I’ve got a graduate degree from the University of Chicago and you couldn’t hold the jockstrap of any of the people working here.”
Plus, you don’t even pronounce Hahvahd right.
That’s great for them but I would still say that is the exception, not the rule.
Nothings wrong with blending fun with work. We drink beers in the office on Fridays. People take breaks to go play ping-pong. It’s great fun. You know what’s going to be even more fun? When we all get to do that 24 hours a day in about a year or so because this company hasn’t turned a profit ever.
Blending work with fun is nice, but it’s secondary to being profitable.
Oh I get the point. You think that any employer who doesn’t “get” your email is probably not someone you would want to work for anyway. That is faulty logic. I have had employers I’ve had nothing in common with who are still great employers. I’ve also had employers who I have everything in common with but they are just not very good managers.
Yes, you are correct that you never know what might spark an employers interest - your school, being a Boy Scout, same fraternity, a hobbie. But these are not the things that necessarily make a good job or a good work environment. You are running the risk of loosing an otherwise good job because your potential employer does not get your quirky email.
Here’s an artical you might find interesting.
http://www.dreamjobs.tv/tips167.html
What the heck kind of work do you do?!
Fish!
Actually, I don’t think you get the point at all. It’s not about whether a potential employer “gets” the email address, or whether having something in common with the employer will mean a good job.
What some people are saying, and I agree with, is that if a person culling resumes looks at a quirky but otherwise unexceptional email address and eliminates that candidate for that reason alone, then that employer is quite likely to make other decisions based on personal prejudices rather than whether their employees actually do a good job. That is not a company I would want to work for, and does not foster a good working environment or a successful company.
Of course, I work in a field(IS) where results are more important than appearances - in something like sales where schmoozing is a necessary skill I can see a certain need to make sure 100% of your appearance is groomed correctly ti the job.
As far as why I don’t use my full name in emails - I’m a single female who lives alone and I consider an email address public information - I don’t have any control over where it might be distributed. Therefore, I am not going to put my full real name in any email address (I don’t even have it as the return name in my email program)
??
Yeah…I get it. Look, I’m just telling you it looks really immature and unprofessional. Do what you want bu it’s far more likely to hurt your job prospects than help. To take your argument to its logical extreme, maybe I should interview in a red velvet suit and ski boots? Hey, I don’t want to work for a company where I can’t be myself.
My wife is on our local school board, and they were interviewing candidates. One fellow showed up with his wife, and brought her into the interview with him. She wasn’t content to sit in the back, though. Every time the school board asked him a question, she jumped in and answered it!
I was hiring a Web designer for a job that required detailed custom coding (this was about five years ago). The job description stated that I needed someone with “in-depth knowledge of HTML.” I got a resume from a fellow that said he had taught HTML classes for over a year. Cool! He came into the interview, and couldn’t answer basic fundamental questions about tags and page structure. Turned out he had been teaching how to use Microsoft FrontPage and had never even looked at the page source code it produced. sigh
How about the programmer application that listed expertise in “pasqal and pearl” instead of “Pascal and perl”? If you claim to be an expert in something, learn how to spell it!
To generalize that point a bit, don’t say anything in the resume or the interview that you can’t back up. I had a fellow claim to be fluent in Spanish, and one of our Marketing guys was a Berlitz instructor in Spanish and Portuguese. I had him interview the guy first. The candidate could barely converse in Spanish. He wasn’t anywhere close to fluent. I didn’t even bother to talk to the candidate myself. If he lied about that, he probably lied about other stuff, too.
Don’t babble. There are a lot of questions interviewers aren’t legally allowed to ask you, but if you volunteer the information, that’s fine. A friend of mine likes to ask a question like, “If you are required to work late, do you have a way to get home?” He’ll then shut up as the candidate tells him about marital status, car(s), kid(s) and all kinds of irrelevant stuff, when a simple “yes” would have sufficed.
Don’t offer to blow off your previous employer. I always ask candidates when they’d be able to start. I had one guy tell me he could start right away. I asked, “don’t you have to give notice at your current job.” He told me he was supposed to, but he didn’t like his boss, so he’d be happy to just not show up. Great! If that’s how you’ll treat him, that’s probably how you’ll treat me!
Along that same line, I had a candidate for a sales position who worked for one of my competitors. He offered to make a copy of their customer database for me if I’d hire him. Incredible. What a sleaze!
Actual examples…
Show up on the 16th when your interview was scheduled for the 15th. Argue with the receptionist that today really is the 15th. Maybe you should check a newspaper first?
When asked “what type of challenges do you enjoy” say "Phsyical challenges. I was a high school gymnast. I love to move. I get such a thrill from the way my body performs. At least not when you’re interviewing for a desk job rather than pole dancer.
In an interview for assistant marketing manager, tell the interviewer “I really don’t have any respect for marketing. I’m only interviewing for a position in your department because I hope to move into an area where the real work gets done, like finance.”
Tell me about all the important people your parents know.
And how not to even get the interview…
Have a lewd, offensive greeting on your answering machine. Hey, I like Richard Pryor. But I’m not about to bring someone in to interview at my conservative company whose answering uses portions of his monologue with language like that.