Through your college years, your .edu e-mail address may have become like the tattered blanket you held onto as a child – comfortable, dependable, even supportive.

But now it’s time to put the .edu in your memory chest, so to speak, and use a permanent e-mail address that reflects who you are now – a young professional! Here’s why:

Employers May Contact You After You’ve Left School

Okay, so it’s been two months since you sent out a résumé, and you haven’t heard anything back. I mean, it’s been so long that you hardly remember sending it. Surely the employer has forgotten as well, right? Not necessarily. Employers may want to contact you a year, even two years after you expressed interest.

There are any number of reasons for this. For example, they may not have needed someone with your skill set at the time they received your résumé, but they could have put it in a file they periodically review when they have openings. A permanent address insures they will still be able to contact you.

.EDU E-Mail Addresses Brand You as a Student

What’s wrong with being a student? Absolutely nothing! In fact, employers want to hire young people with the latest training and education and the freshest ideas. But at the same time, you want them to think of you as a professional engaged in the work force rather than a student writing papers in school. A permanent e-mail address helps employers identify you as a young professional.

It’s Time to Party!

While this may be a great rallying call after your graduation ceremony, it’s definitely not the first thing you want a potential employer to see from you. So choose a regular, professional e-mail name. I know employers who will not even open an e-mail sent from somebody like PartyGirl@World.com, or OzzyRocks@World.com.

Remember, an employer does not know you yet, and your e-mail address is often the first impression you make!

Crafting an effective, professional e-mail is kind of like hang gliding – it’s not really that hard, but you sure don’t want to mess up. So, follow these e-mail tips to insure your best chance at landing the position you desire – ignore them, and you risk crashing!

Always Include an E-Mail Subject Line

Think about it – how likely are you to read e-mails with no subject line from someone you don’t know? Not very, right? Well, neither are working professionals. So include a subject line on all your outgoing e-mails, or they’re likely to end-up in the recipient’s trash box, never even viewed.

Personally, I like action-oriented subject lines like “Networking Request from Duke Student.” Headlines like this will help grab the recipient’s attention and make it more likely that your message will get read.

Address the Recipient

Does it seem weird to write “Dear Mr. Jones?” Well, it does to me sometimes too! So you can skip the “Dear” if you’d like, but don’t skip the person. Always begin your e-mail with the recipient’s name, and, if they have one, title.

Dr. Jones, Professor Smith, Admiral Brown – addressing people by their title actually tells them something about you. It says that you know how to treat people with respect. It says an employer can count on you to treat clients right.

If the person has no specific title, then Mr. or Ms. are fine. And if you do not have a specific contact person, you can address the department, for example: To Human Resources.

Proofread for Grammar and Punctuation

Nothing will destroy your credibility faster than writing riddled with grammatical errors. I mean, you’re a college student or graduate, right? You know how to write correctly, so be sure to do it.

Personal e-mails can ignore grammatical rules, but with professional e-mails, always follow proper punctuation, capitalization, and other standard rules of grammar. Do not try to entertain with abbreviations or jokes. You want the recipient to take you seriously. And always proofread before sending. Look at something else for a minute, and then look back at the e-mail to insure that the recipient’s name, any contact information, and all spelling and grammar are correct.

Include Your E-Mail Signature

Working professionals always attach e-mail signatures, and so should you! I think this is so important that I’ve even written a short article on “Why You Must Have a Professional E-Mail Signature.” If you don’t already have one, check that out!

Insert the Recipient’s E-Mail Address Last

We’ve all hit “Send” accidentally, right? And we’ve all seen or heard horror stories about people accidentally sending nasty e-mails about their boss – to their boss! You can easily avoid this potential deal-breaker by always inserting the recipient’s address last, not first. Do this after proofreading, and make it the last thing you do before hitting “Send.”

Ever watch a movie, see an actor appear on screen, and ask yourself, “where have I seen that guy before?” Wouldn’t it be nice if a little pop-up showed up and told you what else that guy had been in?

Well, a professional e-mail signature is like your personal electronic pop-up – it helps people remember you.
Here’s what to include in an e-mail signature, plus three good reasons why you must have one.

What Belongs in an E-Mail Signature

Always list your name, phone number, and e-mail address. If you have a title, list that too, right after your name. You may think it’s too “small” to identify yourself as, say, a treasurer of a sorority when you’re sending an e-mail to someone in the great big corporate world – but trust me, it’s important! It shows that you identify yourself with a job.

So an e-mail signature might look like this:

Jane Doe
President, Duke University Marketing Association
555-555-1212
Jane.Doe@World.com

(See an additional suggestion below, under “Networking”)

Why Have an E-Mail Signature?

So Employers Can Easily Contact You

A signature ensures that any employer can reach you any time in any situation.
It is not always the case that someone can return an e-mail to you simply by hitting “Reply.” A friend of yours may have forwarded your résumé to someone else, or maybe one employer has forwarded it to another. Never make employers work to find you. Instead, they should simply be able to scroll down and click on the e-mail address in your signature.

Because It’s Great for Networking

In addition to your basic contact information that I listed above, you can also add a brief “tag” line that tells people – at a glance – something about the work you are seeking.

Jane Doe, 2008 Graduate Seeking Marketing Position
President, Duke University Marketing Association
555-555-1212
Jane.Doe@World.com

With the tag line, every single person who sees your e-mail will also notice your purpose in sending it – and you never know who might end up helping you!

It Reminds People of Who You Are

And in the end, this reminder is the overall purpose of an e-signature: providing it means you can be reached easily, that you’ve got an at-a-glance picture of your overall purpose, and that this information is distributed to everyone who opens the e-mail. It all adds up being remembered!

I know – your .edu e-mail address does carry a lot of power. I, too, remember thinking how impressed employers would be with my duke.edu e-mail address when I was first applied to internships. But hear me out on this one!

Here’s one great reason you should drop your .edu e-mail address and use a permanent, professionally-named one instead – You’ll never have to worry whether an important e-mail will “bounce” because your account reached its quota or you accidentally deleted it as spam!

By my senior year, my once tidy e-mail inbox was overwhelmed with spam e-mail. And I spent a good portion of my time sorting through e-mails just to make sure I didn’t accidentally delete a message from a legitimate prospective employer!

So when I didn’t hear from that employer, my stomach would literally turn at night worrying whether I had accidentally deleted their e-mail as spam or unknowingly reached my inbox quota.

That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands and get a permanent, professionally-named e-mail address that I would only distribute to prospective employers.

And it made all the difference in the world. I not only slept better at night, but I also found it easier to sift through my e-mails in my inbox because they were all from prospective employers!

So, if you want to rest easy knowing that your e-mails are safe, take action by getting a permanent, professionally-named e-mail address that you only distribute to prospective employers right away!