HOW IMPORTANT IS ONLINE BRANDING FOR YOU?
When Job Hunting it comes down to YOU. Its great that you worked at reputable companies, however the buck stops with YOU.
Here at Afpol we have decieded to expand on the importance of having an Online Brand Identity, escpecially when it comes to Job Hunting or Career Growth.
We will be tackling Twitter/Facebook and the all imporant Job networking site LinkedIn in our next few Blogs.
But lets start with a Peronalised Email Address.
@, a wonderful tool.
Just like fashion sense, or lack there of, your Email says alot about you.
You can be Personal, Funny or
Professional, Distant or Hard to remember.
The combination between the noun before the @ and the one that follows is very imporant to consider.
Ordinarily people that are looking for work send out emails from their personal email addresses such as Gmail or Hotmail, however there are those Employees that are openly seeking Employment and use their Company Email addresses.
Your email address matters.
I would not recommend using the Company Email address simply because you then lose the contact list and email trail that you worked so hard on whilst Job Hunting, it also may be against your company policy. However should you be good to go with the use of your Companies email address, I recommend that you CC to your personal email address so as to retain the Email thread and contact persons.
If you do not have a personal email address... GO GET ONE NOW!!!
Please avoid making your personal email address too strange as this does not appear professional to the Recruiter, so for example avoid using usernames such as: blondeprincess@gmail.com or huskyhunk@yahoo.com.
The wrong impression is given ;)
Try to be memorable, so this: konrad2149395@hotmail.com is not cool and makes you look like Spam.
The Best way to go is a
PERSONALISED EMAIL ADDRESS.
Mmmmmh tastey.
It costs, but its worth it.
There are many people that have a personalised email and this approach has a great feel to it, for example name@surname.com. This type of email address allows the person that you are in contact with to feel connceted to you as a person rather than through a Company such as Gmail or Yahoo.
Remember you are your own Brand Ambassador, and treating your Online/Social Media image professionally as one would with a Company image, is not a bad thing.
You can get a personalised email address rather easily these days, and along with the personalised email address you will most probably get other offerings such as Website space or Cloud storage. With Google Apps (Google Business) you get a plethora or amazing tools, equally with Microsofts Office 365 and Windows 10 solution.
Here are a couple of great methods of getting that Personal touch to your email address:
Do not let words such as "Domain" frighten you. Below is a video from GoDaddy that explains the relationship between a Domain and your Email.
Once you have a personalised email address, you will appear more.... YOU.
In our next blog we will take a look into LinkedIn, and how this fantastic tool can aid you in connecting with the right people.
Amor Legere
Konrad Bryczkowski
Further Reading:
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