e mail address

Have you done an audit on your e-mail address lately? I don’t mean opening up your account and looking for messages. I mean, taking a closer look at the actual e-mail address you are using - It might be sabotaging your job search. Personally, I have received a number of e-mails from some very interesting address names lately. That being said, if you were to ask me if these names sounded professional, I would have to say absolutely not! Sometimes, we get so acclimated to that personal address we simply forget about how others might perceive it. Add in the close scrutiny of a prospective employer, and your resume containing that social e-mail address COULD be destined for the round file. Dead-giveaways unwittingly revealed in your e-mail address name can lift the curtain about the personal you during a job search… and absolutely need to be tightened up, or even replaced in favor of more sanitized versions. I’m not saying you need to "ditch" your personal/social e-mail - You need to bury it, or at the very least, not volunteer it when presenting an otherwise professional document for consideration for a job. Think about this… what would you think “Gnarly1941@emailaddress.com” might convey? Or “MaryJaneReefer@emailaddress.net?” Don’t laugh. I’ve seen similar e-mail addresses like these on resumes more often than you would guess. A surprising number of people continue to send out resumes that have what I call "goofy" e-mail addresses. Even if it isn’t goofy, an e-mail address could potentially torpedo your job search before you even get it off the ground because the one you are using doesn’t project a professional image. If you have to create a new "professional" e-mail, then do so, but don’t forget to check it. Sometimes, candidates get so caught up checking their social e-mail accounts that they forget to open up their business one… only to find a message from an employer dated three weeks ago waiting for them. Oops. Game over.