Emails...

Okay – Pet Peeve time:

The “Are you serious with that?” moments I’ve had with candidates’ emails, voicemails, etc.

CareerBuilder’s “When Bad Job Searches Happen to Good Candidates” article suggests:

Rehearse the voice mail message you plan to leave. Consider a more serious e-mail address. Does your home voice mail play strange music or have a silly outgoing message? Is your résumé printed on purple paper? All of these things factor into a headhunter's first, and indelible, impression.

I couldn’t agree more! I mean really, do you think anyone is going to take you seriously as a professional when your dog greets callers on your answering machine? I mean 10 out of 10 for cute but minus several hundred on the professional index!

However, I can almost excuse the answering machine faux pas, but what I can’t get past are the email addresses…Here’s just a sampling of some we’ve seen on resumes (altered slightly to protect their identity):

mydog (wonder if this answering machine barks too!)
sham (what a great salesperson)
toolman (not even if you’re a tool & die specialist!)
cowboy (in various forms, all of them wrong)
kaboom (hope he’s not a chemical engineer)
star-trek anything (bet this is an engineer!)
babykelly (Barbie fan???)
mafia (in various forms, funny enough all in the construction trades)
adream4u, girl4u, etc (pretty sure we aren’t a dating service; therefore anything ending in 4u is out!)
bone4life (not touching that one)

I’m just asking that you put some thought into what image your email address projects; take 5 minutes, jump on gmail or yahoo and find a simple, clean, professional email address.

That’s my soapbox for today… Thanks!