When applying for a job, it is important to present yourself in a professional manner. First impression really matters and everything about you — including your email address — should show professionalism. Think of your current email address and judge it as a hiring officer. How would you react if you hear or read that email address? If, by any chance, it sounds offensive or can make a bad impression about you, you better change it and create a professional email address.
An unprofessional email address is one of the many reasons why job search fails. Why? because your email address is one of the first things that the hiring officer will know about you.
How to Create a Professional Email Address
Here are some guidelines on how to create a professional your email address:
1. Use a variation of your initials, first name and surname
The easiest and most common way of making a professional email address is using your name and initials. This is an effective technique but because most names are no longer unique, it is necessary to include your surname.
You should also know that since email addresses consisting purely of names are now unavailable, you can add your zip code or your birth year.
2. Neatness is important
An email address like [email protected] is better than [email protected] because it is neater and a neat email address is more professional.
3. Portray a brand
If you are pursuing a career in the sales industry, using [email protected] is a good email address because it matches with the brand that you want to pursue throughout your career.
4. Create an email using your domain
If you are in the IT industry, you have no excuse for not owning an email address using your domain. If your name is Juan dela Cruz, email like [email protected]juandelacruz.com is the best professional email address that you can have.
Buying a domain might be costly, but throughout your career and for the sake of building your brand, it is worth it.
5. Use a professional mailing domain
The most popular and successful mailing domains are Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. If you can’t afford to buy your own domain, stick to these two.
What to Avoid in Creating an Email Address
On the other hand, these are the things that you should avoid when using an email address for your application:
1. Avoid using your nickname and pet name
Avoid including your nickname or pet name in your professional email address. (You can, however, use it in your personal email address.) Email addresses like [email protected] or [email protected] sends a negative impression.
2. Avoid including words relating to race, religion or sexual orientation
Just don’t include it. Don’t (unless you want to be discriminated).
3. Avoid long and error-prone character
In the busy world of business, you will never want the sender or the hiring officer to have a hard time understanding and typing [email protected] to the recipient bar before he/she can send an interview invitation. You should also remember that some numbers and letters are easily confused with each other like 0 (zero) with the letter o and 1 (one) with the letter l (el).
Final Take
To sum it all up, keep your professional email address easy to read, easy to type and non-offensive.
So, how do you compare your email address with the following guidelines?
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