Is That Your Real Phone Number and Email Address?

Something I don’t see often but do remember coming across when I was hiring were resume submissions that had fake email addresses and phone numbers on them.  The problem with this is that when you want to interview them, you cannot reach them and they lose out on possibly being hired.  The Applicants either mistyped their contact information or they gave the wrong ones on purpose.  The times that I would find a resume like this, it would usually turn out that both the email address and phone number were incorrect.  It doesn’t make much sense does it?  Lets go over a few possible reasons why someone may do this and also why it is important.  We’ll also go over a couple possible options for you if you are one of the people who doesn’t want to put their personal information out to the world.

There are two reasons that I think someone may include the wrong email and phone number on their resume on purpose.  They either don’t want spammers to find their email address and spam them or they may be afraid to put it out publicly because of the fear of identity theft.  That sounds a bit extreme but it is a real concern for some people.  The issue with not including a real phone number or email address on your resume is that although you can help to stop people from finding your personal email and number, but you also stop Hiring Managers and Recruiters with jobs from being able to reach you.

When you are trying to find a job, if your resume makes it passed automated screening tools and into someone’s hand, you have a chance at getting called for an interview.  By providing the wrong contact information you make it very difficult for the person hiring to get a hold of you.   If they can’t reach you then most of them are going to move on to the next person and you will more than likely lose the job.  Even if you don’t like putting your phone number and email address out on the web, sometimes you have to really think about the potential loss of call backs and interviews that you’ll get by not providing it.  I’m not saying you should put it everywhere, but you should consider the success of your job search if you make it harder to contact you.  If you don’t trust any sites or any submissions with your personal information, there are a few options you can use.

1.  Set up a new email address specifically for job hunting.

There are a ton of free email providers out there like Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail.   Once you find one that you trust you can sign up for a new email address like YourName@Gmail.com or Your-Name@Gmail.com and use that address for job hunting and on your resume.  That way you can keep your private email hidden and neatly store all of your submissions and responses from companies in your new email account.

2.  Set up a new phone number.

Landlines are much less expensive than they were 10 years ago.  There are very reasonable plans and services out there where you can get a new phone number and not have to spend a ton of money.  If you don’t want to give out your cell phone or your personal phone number on your resume, set up a land line for job hunting only, if you have the money.  By setting up a second phone number you will be able to use that for your job hunt and not have to worry about people calling your personal number or other people adding it to telemarketing lists.

One of the most important things about job hunting is to let potential employers be able to contact you easily.  If you give them the incorrect contact information then you make their jobs more difficult and may end up making your own job search much harder.   If you don’t want to give out your personal email address or phone number, set up new accounts just for your job search.

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career, jobs, jobsearch, resume