Hiring Rules

Brittany has an interesting post up on Wired Workplace about turnoffs for potential employers in a digital era. Some of the items seem quirky, but fair. Job-seekers should probably have their own, professional-looking email addresses rather than shared accounts; obviously, doing research on a company or agency you're looking to hire makes sense; Facebook friending someone you don't already work with or have a serious, established relationship with is far too forward. But, for example, picking on folks who have America Online email addresses just seems like a form of age discrimination to me. Sure, AOL is kind of old-school, and most folks have shifted to free forms of email with bigger storage capacity like Gmail. But unless a candidate shows a broad inability to adapt to new technology, penalizing someone for their choice of email provider seems arbitrary.