A job search is a short burst of high-exposure signups that produces years of mail afterwards. Job boards sell CV databases, agencies trade candidate lists, and applications route through third-party platforms — so the address you use during a two-month search keeps receiving recruiter mail long after you've been hired. A dedicated address you can switch off afterwards resolves the asymmetry.
Why job hunting is unusually leaky
- Job boards license their CV databases. Recruiters pay for access — that's the business model, and it's in the terms you accept when you make your profile searchable.
- Agencies trade candidate lists between themselves and with sister companies.
- Applications go through third-party systems. The applicant tracking system, not the employer, often ends up holding your details.
- Your CV itself contains the address, and CVs get forwarded, stored and occasionally uploaded to places you never chose.
- The search ends; the exposure doesn't. This is the core asymmetry — you needed to be findable for eight weeks and remain findable for years.
The setup
- One address for the whole search, on a domain you own if possible:
jobs2026@yourdomain.com. Put it on the CV and use it for board profiles. - Separate addresses for agencies you actually engage with. If you're working with three recruiters, give each their own — then you know which one shared your details.
- A different address again for direct applications to employers you care about. These are the ones you don't want cut off by accident.
- Keep everything live until you've been in the role a few months. Offers fall through, references get chased, and payroll sometimes emails the address on file.
- Then disable the board and agency addresses. The recruiter mail stops in one action.
- Keep the employer-application address alive — it may be attached to accounts at companies you'd apply to again.
Looking professional
A hiring manager sees your address. jobs@yourname.com reads as organised. x7fq2k@mozmail.com reads as odd, and a well-known masking domain occasionally reads as evasive to someone who doesn't know what it is.
This is a genuine argument for a custom domain over a shared masking domain specifically here — anything@yourname.com looks like a personal professional domain, because that's exactly what it is. The wider comparison
Don't forget the other leak
If you write code, your commit metadata carries an email address, and technical recruiters mine public repositories systematically. Most platforms offer a no-reply address for exactly this. Historical commits keep whatever you used, but you can stop adding to it. The full recruiter-mail picture
After the search
Disabling the board address is the point of the whole exercise, and it's worth being deliberate about the timing — not the day you accept, but once you're settled.
When you next look, create a fresh address rather than re-enabling the old one. The old one is on lists now; a new one starts clean, and you get a fresh attribution record for the new search.
That cycle — open an address, use it hard for a season, close it — is what aliases are for, and job hunting is the clearest example of it. Best practices