The Student Room Group

Is it unprofessional to have your year of birth in your email address?

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Reply 20
Original post by CherryCherryBoomBoom
Hello. My main email address is my first name followed by the last two digits of the year I was born. I've had it for several years and have used it to apply for jobs in the past, some successful and many not. I've nearly finished studying my HND and I'm going to start applying for relevant full time jobs very soon. However, I'm wondering if it is worth revising the use of my email address and creating a new one for job applications that doesn't reference my year of birth? Since employers can probably guess my age from it, and I guess it's best they can't so that it doesn't give them the chance to discriminate against my age? Plus, I'm wondering if it possibly looks a bit unprofessional as well?

I've created a poll for quick answers, but if I could get written answers too, that would be great thanks! :smile:


I think it can look unprofessional, I have an email address for social media things, and a more "professional" sounding one that I give on my cv Etc.
I think the most professional sounding email addresses are those that have your first initial and then surname in full, avoiding nicknames or long numbers.
Hope this helps, although it's just my opinion!!
Reply 21
The email address I use for applying for jobs is my name and last two numbers of my year of birth and I've had no problems getting interviews. Employers can roughly guess how old you are from your CV/application form by the dates you did your GCSEs and A Levels anyway.
Original post by threeportdrift
It's fine - no-one is going to bother to do the maths to try and find some way to discriminate against you. They can tell to plus or minus a few years from your CV anyway, and they if you turn up to interview they get another clue.


I think I remember you as a CV helper on TSR years ago? I guess you know what you're talking about then :smile:

By the way, what do you mean by this bit in bold? Are you talking about school grades on your CV?
Original post by gemmam
The email address I use for applying for jobs is my name and last two numbers of my year of birth and I've had no problems getting interviews. Employers can roughly guess how old you are from your CV/application form by the dates you did your GCSEs and A Levels anyway.


Good point, I guess there's no avoiding that, not unless you get to the point in your career when they're no longer important to include on your CV.


Original post by SRGW19
I think it can look unprofessional, I have an email address for social media things, and a more "professional" sounding one that I give on my cv Etc.
I think the most professional sounding email addresses are those that have your first initial and then surname in full, avoiding nicknames or long numbers.
Hope this helps, although it's just my opinion!!


I agree to be honest. I tried this combination on an email provider just now and there's a good username free for me :smile:.

Thanks for the replies everyone! Since opinions are rather mixed, I'm actually leaning towards creating a new email address without the numbers to be on the safe side. Plus, my main inbox gets quite inundated these days anyway, so might be worth keeping all job stuff separated to make for easier sorting. I suppose I have nothing to lose :smile:
Original post by CherryCherryBoomBoom
Hello. My main email address is my first name followed by the last two digits of the year I was born. I've had it for several years and have used it to apply for jobs in the past, some successful and many not. I've nearly finished studying my HND and I'm going to start applying for relevant full time jobs very soon. However, I'm wondering if it is worth revising the use of my email address and creating a new one for job applications that doesn't reference my year of birth? Since employers can probably guess my age from it, and I guess it's best they can't so that it doesn't give them the chance to discriminate against my age? Plus, I'm wondering if it possibly looks a bit unprofessional as well?

I've created a poll for quick answers, but if I could get written answers too, that would be great thanks! :smile:


I advise creating another on the lines of [email protected] (cherrysmith, cherry.smith or, perhaps, cherry-smith are fine too, of course). If you can't get one of those then add a three digit number or "email" or something like that.

You should not have your birth year in your email address, anyway, for the simple reason that it gives away too much to anyone seeking to steal your identity information.
Really it should just be firstname.lastname@gmail.com (or whatever email provider you use), unless you have a common name.
I don't think it should matter though - I've just been told a few times that you shouldn't use your DOB or anything because of age discrimination etc.

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