Your email address may not seem too important when submitting your resume to an open job application, however it is one of the most important pieces of information you can provide.
Your email address is a reflection of yourself and having one that isn’t professional can hurt your chances at landing a job interview.
Your email address is one of the first pieces of information that a recruiter or hiring manager sees.
As your email address is typically towards the top of your resume, it is both easily noticed and more often than not, scrutinized by the employer.
Your email address should be both professional and easy to remember.
You should avoid any unnecessary words, numbers, or characters.
What Is The Best Email Service?
When creating a new email address, it is best to use one that is associated with professionalism.
If you do not have a business email address, typically designated as FirstName.
LastName@Company.com, then it is best to opt to create a Gmail account.
A Gmail account is a free email service from Google.
Gmail offers its users 15GB of storage, which is vastly superior to other email service providers.
In addition, Gmail offers enhanced spam protection and has dedicated, native applications for all major operating systems, including iOS and Android.
Gmail is seen as the most professional email service provider in the business world and we highly recommend opting to create an email address there.
Alternatively, if you have a college or university email address, then you may place that on your resume.
These email addresses are typically provided by your college or university and have a clean naming convention to them.
However, many colleges and universities automatically delete a student’s school email address within a certain timeframe after graduation or leaving the school.
How Should Your Email Address Be Formatted?
Professionalism is key here.
You never want to include an email address on your resume that shows immaturity.
Furthermore, you should absolutely avoid any email address that can be taken as offensive or disrespectful.
Email addresses with jokes, fake names, or innuendos should be avoided at all costs.
Ideally, your email address should remain professional and simple.
You will want it to be FirstName.LastName@gmail.com or FirstNameLastName@gmail.com or FirstInitial.LastName@gmail.com or FirstInitialLastName@gmail.com.
This is the most professional format and are one’s that clearly denote who you are.
You don’t want to confuse the recruiter or hiring manager, so keeping it simple is key.
Tips
If you are new to Gmail, you can set up mail forwarding from your previous email address.
This will allow all new email correspondences sent to your previous email address to be forwarded to your new Gmail account.
You can follow steps on how to setup mail forwarding here.
Secondly, if you opt to only use your Gmail account for professional correspondences, be sure to periodically login to your account.
Some email services will automatically delete or remove email addresses that are not used.
Lastly, be sure to set up two-factor authentication in Gmail.
Besides ensuring that you won’t be locked out of your account, it will help you to avoid hackers and other bad actors from attempting to login to your account.
