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Nothing is more frustrating as a job seeker than sending an e-mail out and not getting a response or even knowing if it was received.
You might be blocking your e-mail from even getting to the employer’s inbox. Or perhaps you could look more professional when your e-mail does arrive in the inbox.
#1 → Your e-mail address should be your name and it should be on your resume as part of the header. If your name is John Smith, try using your middle initial or even your whole middle name. johnhsmith@gmail.com or johnhowardsmith@gmail.com.
#2. → Don’t put numbers in your e-mail address. It looks unprofessional and if you ever look closely at your spam filter, many of the e-mail addresses in spam have numbers. Keep yourself out of the spam filters.
#3 → Don’t use cute names or hobby names. If you are already doing #1, I shouldn’t have to say this, but I have resume clients every day who give me addresses that saying things like: dirttanks@msn.com or fluffypuppy@aol.com or bigpackerfan@yahoo.com. Most of the time, I will tell my clients to change their address or set up a new one for their job search.
#4 → Don’t use your business e-mail. Even if your employer says it is ok because you have been downsized, it is much better to use your own. Prospective employers don’t know if you have permission and in case an opportunity comes up down the road, you want that e-mail to get to your personal in-box. This should be obvious, but employers do look at e-mail from their employees and will terminate people for abuse of company property (which includes computers and e-mail systems.)
#5 → Use a reliable e-mail provider. You should be able to access your e-mail from anywhere. If you rely on a system that can only be accessed at home, you might miss a job offer or request for an interview. I set my clients up on gmail.com (Google mail.) My IT specialists have recommended it as the most reliable free program out there. If you have your own website for your job search with your own domain name and you can access it from anywhere, that is even better. Website: http://johnsmith.com so e-mail: johnsmith@johnsmith.com
#6. → Check your e-mail. This also should be common sense but check your e-mail at least daily, preferably morning and night. I check my e-mail much more than that but I have run into job seekers that tell me they rarely check their e-mails. I have helped clients with uploading resumes into online systems. Most send an auto-response immediately but sometimes a real person sends an e-mail that instructs you on the next step in the process.
#7. → Use a signature block. I did a quick scan of e-mail from clients and I found that most don’t have a signature block and the few that did were using business e-mail addresses and signatures. (see #4) What is a signature block? Jason Alba covered this recently. I look at mine regularly but it should have contact information in it. Your name, e-mail address, cell phone number, home phone if you are using it for your job search. Below is my current signature which is obviously a business signature. Yours should be personal.
#8 → Reply professionally. This again should be commonsense but make sure that everything you do and say is professional when you are in a job search. Your phone etiquette, your e-mail response, your personal appearance, everything should be done with your target in mind.
Do you have more tips for helping the job seeeker get e-mail read? Leave them in the comments.
Julie, these are great tips – thanks for writing about this. As a recruiter, I get very frustrated when I don’t have a reliable way to quickly get in touch with someone. We all have our communication preferences (e.g., phone, email, etc.) but many recruiters (including me) love the speed of email. I really wish people would just get a free gmail account, first name dot last name, as you’ve suggested in your post – even if you only use it for your job search, that’s fine.
Everyone has heard how busy recruiters are, right? Well, that means we work fast and under a lot of pressure. I’ve personally mistyped complicated email addresses when trying to contact a candidate, and only found out about it when I got the error email in return. By then, I’m frustrated to go back and carefully/slowly type in some crazy address that reads like a high-security password (usually these include some characters from the person’s name and numbers). It’s an email address, not a password!! Passwords are designed to keep people out; your email address should be designed to make it easy for people to contact you.
I have a couple of other suggestions to add -
Depending on the font you use, an “i” and an “l” can be easily confused. So, if those letters are in your name/email address, be sure the font you use makes it clear.
And be sure to proofread your email address (and other contact information) – I have had candidates misspell their own email address, or provide an incorrect email address – it really doesn’t leave a good impression when I get an “invalid address” reply or when my email reaches the wrong person whose email address you mistakenly put on your resume.
Wonderful comment, Laurie! And great to hear from your perspective! I find that there are so many people who are not even aware of the trouble they can cause and the potential for missing the job opportunity! Come back and leave your great insight again!
Great tips, Julie! Thanks for another great post.
Thanks, Shahrzad, I saw your comment come in by e-mail and I was waiting for you to give me more tips. Hope you are well!
Hi Julie
Some great advice there – particularly liked… “Use a signature block”
Not heard of it before but I’ll head over to the Jason Alba link and take a look.
.-= Keith Davis´s last undefined ..Response cached until Sun 18 @ 10:22 GMT (Refreshes in 52 Minutes) =-.
Thanks Keith, If you are using Outlook or another program that drives your e-mail, you can set a signature. I just checked my own Gmail account that I rarely use and if you go to the settings,you can turn signature on and set-up whatever signature you want.
Except I tried to paste the signature above into the signature area and kept getting the message that it was too long even when I deleted almost everything. I tend to cut and paste so you might want to try actually typing the information in. Gmail does not give a character message so you don’t know what the limit is.
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