AIBU to have judged and not interview because of ...

[JumpingThroughHoops]

....emails addresses?

Shoot me but XXX-Bitch_troll@etc and XXX-smokes-dope@etc goes straight in the shred pile.

If you are too stupid to set up a regular email account for job applications then you are too stupid to employ. I find it more frightening they could possibly be on a jury or vote.

They say that judgements are made in the first 30 seconds...the sme must be true of CVs...

After many years in business I was working for myself when i needed to employ a nanny. 3 candidates came to my house. One had absolutely filthy hands. She was decorating at home. Fair enough. But did she honestly think I would employ someone to look after my PFB with dirty hands?!

sme = same

Ahhhh - that in itself is another problem Annie.... Anyone without a facebook page would nowadays not be considered for a job where strong social networking was a necessity. If I want to employ someone to sell something for me, I want to know they are social beings, well used to selling themselves and happy to have an audience.... (just not pics of them naked drowning in a pool of vodka/vomit/any combination....)

My dad used to have to put his address down on application forms as the place beside where he actually lived - as where he actually lived had a bad rep.

It was back in the days when everything was by post - it was a few years before he even had a landline.

He reckoned there were a few jobs he didn't get interviewed for because he applied for them before he realised about the address.

Also he wasn't anything high falutin' - he was a commis chef!

What may be considered good taste and upmarket in the US is often unrecognised and irrelevant in the UK.

What's considered posh in the UK is increasingly irrelevant in the wider world, though. In twenty years' time most of your bosses could be Chinese or Indian.

This is a fascinating thread and should be mandatory reading for all students - most of them do not realise that things like email addresses should be professional if they're being used for employment correspondence.

My sister is starting a work placement and I did suggest that she makes her FB completely private

I always assumed that firstname.surname.69@ as an email address indicated birth year rather than sexual preference?

Some of these stories have had me in stitches. Soooo glad that my long-term email is [email protected]. I do often get quite at the number of people who, when I say my email out loud, do not know what an underscore is. Mainly people my age and under. Surely it's not that antiquated?!

Some ARE hilareous but I find it disturbing that people are rejected based on RL names and addresses ie things they have less control over. I know people can move but that costs money so can't really be done til they get the job.

I'm laughing at this thread.

But it's quite refreshing how honest people are with preconceptions.

It isn't difficult to enable a spell checker on a word document or email. I don't always spell correctly but I wait for the red squiggle to show me where I've made a mistake.

A few good points made up the thread. Thirty years ago it was expected that you took a parent to your first job interview. Especially if you were apply up town. They didn't go in to the interview with you of course but waited in reception. But it wasn't only you being over viewed, it was also your back ground. I remember a job app for Coutts and it wanted my parents jobs and salaries and nationality!

With all the discrimination legislation companies wouldn't get way with that any more. The age one always makes me chuckle - you cant ask but you can really make a good stab that some one is 20/30/40/50 by the year they left school and their employment history!

You can't ask about families or babies - but many moons ago my line manager didnt get promotion until she took in a doctors letter stating she was sterile (pre IVF days).

Post codes again is a good indication, now with Street View etc, it is so easy to snoop on someone. Social mediums right back to Friends Reunited are also used. Clean up your profiles.

Street view can be out of date though. Our place is an old view, previous tenants so gives no indication of how we keep the garden new windows since the picture was taken too.

Are all these things I have no control over seriously what makes me unemployable?

We had a standard letter that we sent out to unsuccessful applicants. It was drawn up by our head office and I will certainly admit that the sentences were too long, with too many commas but hey ho. We got the letter sent back from an unsuccessful candidate where they had taken a red pen and corrected the grammatical error that they saw in the letter. However, as awkward as the letter read, it was grammatically correct. I still laugh at that one.

Limitedperiodonly - I am glad you phoned Avanta about it. After being out of work for six months I was referred to Ingeus. They did my CV. One day I visited and was given a list of solicitors in central London. I was given a pile of copies of my CV and a pile of covering letters. The covering letters had spelling mistakes and were all addressed to Dear Sir/Madam. The printing quality was terrible. I protested and asked if I could ring the companies to ask for the name of the Office Manager/HR person. I started to phone the companies. I was told it would take too much time. Over 100 letters were sent out. Unsurprisingly I did not receive a single reply.

Following this I became a freelance secretary. I rewrote my CV with help from two brand new books on CV applications. I have just had a second interview for a position as PA to the CEO of a blue chip company.

Fireice - I thought that 69 meant birthyear too!

My dads year of birth is 69, I did actually ask him why he had it in his email, I thought he was just being rude

I wonder if there are a disproportionate amount of unemployed 43 year olds :o

TallulahBetty My email has an underscore too, and I often get a "huh?" when I say it out loud. I think when I set it up (years ago), you couldn't use a hyphen in email or web addresses, I think that has changed now.

I have to confess I have never given much thought to what the first part of my email address says about me - it's not my name, it's an object. I've been more concerned about the fact that it's a hotmail account, I wondered if people made judgements based on that. (Probably not as there are so many free email providers now, I set it up back in the days when most people paid internet service providers for their email service.) I have never had problems finding work so I guess it must be ok.

I am now in the position of job hunting again for the first time in a few years and was wondering what is the done thing these days in terms of listing your education on your CV? I am 34 and left school after my GCSEs but have since been to college and got qualifications in my field. How long after leaving school should you continue to list your individual exam results? Incidentally, I probably will set up a new email address :)

YADNBU - In a previous job I had to sort through the CVs to give to my manager to arrange interviews. Anything with 'funky' email addresses were put straight in the bin. When I have 100 CVs for 1 job I'm not going to keep those from people without the foresight to think that an email like that would be detrimental to their application.

I also once refused to interview a girl who turned up in hot pants.

My ex owns a very fancy Michelin starred restaurant on the Wirral. He's recently been interviewing for an apprentice. Bearing in mind that he is all about molecular gastronomy (all over his website and quite famous in British culinary circles for it) he had one interviewee that asked "do I have to taste the food because I don't like fancy food, I only like KFC".....

DonkeyTeapot - If it helps I left school after my A levels. My results at 16 were pretty poor (shite comprehensive in the north) But I made up for it by taking French exams (DELF), Business Diploma, and increased my O level count to 8 (Grades A to C). I have a qualification section at the end of my CV.

For example

8 O levels (Grades A - C) including English and Maths
ABE Diploma in Business Management

etc

I do not list the years. Hope this helps.

Look at my post above about my latest interviews. That might give you a boost!

Thanks cook, my GCSE results weren't awful, 3xA, 2xB, 2xC, 1xD - quite varied really! (The D was geography. Hated it and tried juggling my options all sorts of ways, but in the last options box it always ended up with geography, metalwork, and a load of things I was taking anyway. I do wonder if I should have taken metalwork...)

I think I might include a line consolidating them like yours, it takes up less space, for one thing!

I get about CVs being too long. But if someone has 25 years experience in say...4 jobs plus lots of professional and academic qualifications, how would you condense that into something short enough to not get binned on the basis of length?

And how long is too long? I read once that ideally a CV should be one page only, but I cant imagine how anyone would manage that!

I should add that I assume the job applied for would make a difference? So a 6 page CV would be forgivable for an International Finance Director, but not for say, a job at Sainsburys. Would that be right?

So that's why I wasnt called for an interview? X

I heard that a CV should be one page too, but there's no way I can squeeze mine into that space. I think it's more acceptable now to have had numerous jobs, so I'm not sure if it really applies any more?