[NTLUG:Discuss] Advice on email account

[steve at sjbaker.org]

> ...Mike's comment is interesting - when I
> scan resumes, I don't make assumptions - I use gmail myself as an
> alternate
> address and I have my domain forwarded to it for the spam filtering.  But
> as
> an employee of a large organization, I would not put ANYTHING past HR -
> simple rules evolve to deal with the flood of inappropriate resumes
> submitted for each job posting.
>
> A gmail... account is an inexpensive way of not using the current job
> email
> to search for the new job.  Never-the-less, from me, FirstLast at gmail.com
> is
> more likely to get serious consideration than StudDog38 at gmail.com - if for
> nothing else than it tells me you were the 39th person to call yourself
> StudDog and that's not the level of professionalism, creativity and adult
> behavior I'm looking for.

The question of what an email address says about someone is interesting. 
I doubt that our HR people are tossing out resume's from people with silly
addresses - but for sure, a "hotmail" address says something about you
that you probably don't want said!  gmail seems a little more 'neutral' -
but having your own domain really is the way to go if you want people to
take you seriously.  It also gives you more control and perhaps a little
more privacy. But you REALLY have to avoid the ISP's that stick their own
messages (or adverts!) onto the end of your messages...that just shrieks
"cheapskate"!

I don't know about "FirstLast".  "SteveBaker" (or even worse,
"StephenBaker", which is my real name) is a lot extra to type and to
remember.  I've been using "steve" (which is what I like everyone to call
me) at "sjbaker"  (my initials and surname, for more formality) and I'm a
".org".  Mostly because I'm not a company (so ".com" seems wrong and some
of the weirder suffixes weren't around when I was domain-shopping) - but
also because the "sjbaker.com" domain was already taken when I started
using that address.  I subsequently purchased sjbaker.com when it became
available - but somehow, I have come to prefer sjbaker.org - although both
addresses work and I frequently get mail via the ".com" address - mostly
because when people don't remember my email address accurately, they take
a guess at ".com".

My son had his domain registered at birth(!) so I expect him to retain the
same email address for life.  I bought my wife the domain with her name as
a birthday present.  The domain with my dog's name on it (sam-the-dog.org)
was mine for a while!  We used it as a joke account so that my sister's
very young daughters could be fooled into thinking that our dog was smart
enough to use email!

The point is that if you have your own web hosting, you can create domains
for about $10 and let them lapse when you don't need them anymore.