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Summer and early fall are popular times for recent grads to look for IT jobs.  If you’re a recent grad embarking on your first (or maybe second, third, etc) job search, here’s one mistake that can hurt your prospects: keeping your student email address.  Why does keeping that .edu address hurt your chances of landing tech jobs?  Here are a few reasons technical recruiters suggest you get a new, professional email address.

You’re making yourself look less professional and hirable. Unless your school email address tells the world that you went to an Ivy League school, you don’t want to keep it.  (Though this is certainly debatable for a few reasons, too!) Now that you’re an IT professional, not a student, you will want your email address to reflect this change.  Since tech roles are usually high stakes, hiring managers need to be able to hire candidates they trust.  (Even arguably entry-level tech roles like Help Desk are imperative—a company (or organization, school, etc) cannot run if its computers are broken!)  In addition to appearing trustworthy, you want to merit your salary expectations.  Because so many tech roles are imperative to a business’s success, managers will pay higher salaries than other roles.  IT staffing companies find that making a bad hire is a much bigger financial cost in the tech field!

You’re limiting your options. Though there are some employers that seek out recent grads for tech roles, this isn’t the case with a vast majority.  Hiring new grads, especially for such crucial roles, requires more resources and the right set-up.  To hire new grads and have them be successful, companies need to have good training and mentorship programs,  a pace of business that can accommodate mistakes or employees who are still learning, and a centralized tech team (if not the whole company).  Small companies or companies with a lot of spread-out employees often can’t handle hiring new grads.  They need to hire candidates on whom they can rely to hit the ground running, be self-motivated, and get work done with little supervision.  While your resume obviously helps to sell you as the best candidate, an email address can still hurt you.  You don’t want an employer to glance at your resume, note the school address, and automatically toss your resume in the ‘no’ pile.

Your school address may eventually cut you off from important professional contacts. School email addresses are often only available for a finite amount of time after you graduate.  Perhaps they’re shut off after six months, a year, two years, etc.  You don’t want to rely on an email address that may just shut off at some unexpected point.  Even if it’s a year or two later, you might be hurting your job search.  IT recruiting firms may decide to check back in with you after a few months, a year, etc to see if you’re interested in a role.  If your email address has been shut off, you’ll never get that message!

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