I recently wrote a mildly informative article for recent architectural graduates titled: Strategies for Acquiring a Job – or How 438 Job Applications Are Not Enough. However, brevity is a skill I have not yet mastered.
Gmail is my favorite email service and should be utilized by all people, not just job-seekers, but I didn’t want to dedicate 17 paragraphs to the importance of a professional email address.
There is a quote attributed to Cicero, Pascal, and Mark Twain,
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
Nevertheless, I need to go on somewhat of a Gmail tirade:
Stop putting periods in your Gmail addresses!
.
Please! Use the address josephsmith@gmail.com and NOT joseph.smith@gmail.com
Not only is the period hard to see, or a burden to constantly pronounce when telling someone your email, but Gmail does not care about that silly period. All the email that you receive at your joseph.smith@gmail.com account is ALSO going straight to the inbox of the 19th century Mormon leader.
Don’t believe me? I have a namesake in Iowa who apparently gets many emails from collegiate basketball programs. Therefore, I also get many emails from collegiate basketball programs. After receiving about 20 emails from the Assistant Basketball Coach of the University of San Diego, I finally emailed him back a snarky rant in an attempt to remove my email address from all future mailing lists. You can view his email and my response email here.
The Assistant Coach (Kyle Bankhead) thought my email was amusing, and he couldn’t have been nicer about the situation, but this is Gmail’s only problematic area. Gmail apparently allows people to sign up with a period even if the actual name is taken, yet all email will go to the same account.
I have emailed both larry.page@gmail.com and sergey.brin@gmail.com regarding this situation, but have not yet received a response.