Professional Tip.

[Chris is me]

This is a pretty good idea in general. If you have to go with something other than your name, make it interesting yet not distracting (I go with "wikichris" on my personalish account, it's gotten me talking about my stint on Wikipedia in more than one interview).

Just remember, anything on the internet can and will be used against you. Don't bend your entire personality and existence on the idea of employment, but don't be stupid either.

[RoboMom]

Thanks for all these posts. Over the years I have written a lot of student references and have had to tell some students I cannot write them a reference unless they change their email address. Sometimes in life we only have a few seconds to make an impression, and you want to make a good one!

In previous years I also sent the following out to the Maryland mentor list. The examples below were changed only very slightly for use in my email blast to mentors.

>>This might be a great time to discuss having a team email address like (Team0000@gmail.com) or to discuss the positives if students establish a more professional email address which can be used with sponsors, and for college and work inquiries. There are many teams who make up business cards to hand out for their team. These can be used for fundraising, to network, and to give to judges at the events.

Hat's off to the creativity of some of these email addresses, but ask them how this would look to a potential sponsor or employer. Emails containing words like "god, or "stanthereallyimportantman" or "hottie911" just don't look that professional.
Go teams!<<

[typharn91]

i actually have a question on this topic as to what to do. My last name happens to be gamer so im not sure how much of a profesional email address i can make using that what would the awesome people here think might be a smartish thing to do with that. Any help appreiceated

[EricH]

A typical professional-type email account has some variation of firstname.lastname@x.y as its format. (Initials may also be used.) So, if your last name is Gamer, firstname.gamer@x.y would probably do the trick. Or, you could put your middle initial in there, something like first.middle.last or first.middlelast, to show that yes, this is really my last name, and yes, I am serious about that. (Of course, when sending from this email address, you would always put at least your first name and last name as a signature.)

[Akash Rastogi]

Originally Posted by typharn91

i actually have a question on this topic as to what to do. My last name happens to be gamer so im not sure how much of a profesional email address i can make using that what would the awesome people here think might be a smartish thing to do with that. Any help appreiceated

The problem with my last name is that I've been called "stogi" "lilstogi" or "stogez" in school since I was little and before I knew it was slang for a cigar. Eventhough that's not such a terrible term, it is still not an email I use anymore incase the person viewing an application or something important is unable to piece together that Rastogi tends to lend itself to that nickname. In your case you could try XXX.Gamer@gmail. From what I have commonly seen, the "dot" usually shows the reader that this is part of a name....then again, if they don't know that then I'm not sure what else you could try.

Edit: EricH beat me to it. =P

[BrendanB]

A few years ago I changed my email address when I started emailing people in BAE and other important places/people. iwant4wheels was funny when I was 13 but a change to brendan.w.browne was a good idea. Also if you have to email someone who doesn't have your address, seeing a person's name appear in the sent bar helps to ensure that it isn't spam.

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by typharn91

i actually have a question on this topic as to what to do. My last name happens to be gamer so im not sure how much of a profesional email address i can make using that what would the awesome people here think might be a smartish thing to do with that. Any help appreiceated

In addition to what Akash posted, I see that your profile lists you as a college student. If that is the case, your college email address would probably be a good choice to use for important communications such as job applications or sponsor contacts. Even if it is based on your last name, the .edu will be a pretty strong hint that it is your name and not a reference to gaming of some kind.

[Burmeister #279]

On top of forwarding 6 mail addresses to my gmail, i use Burmeister.TwoSevenNine as my main contact. Interestingly enough, I've been asked what the Two Seven Nine means by several professional contacts who were actually quite interested about robotics once I told them what it meant, so i guess something like that isn't all bad. I've also seen several really terrible ones from certain people but I know mine isn't bad so it doesn't bother me.

[Molten]

I admit I reluctantly gave out an old email recently to a future employer because they couldn't get my school e-mail to work for some reason. My old e-mail is not bad it's just a variant of "molten" but still. It's a good idea to have a secondary professional e-mail available when needed for specific situations like that. Now that I think about this more, I probably will do so now. Afterall, they are free.

EDIT: As for having the last name of Gamer...I'd suggest possibly leaving it off or just initializing it. An email like JamesG@x.com doesn't look unprofessional at all while still representing your name. I'm sure your last name will come up at some point in the interview process and they won't think anything of it.

[Pavan Dave]

I can't speak much, but in the 5th grade we had "gaggle.net" accounts through the school district. I was good with computers then but my nickname in my family was "Hacu" and I remember getting AIM when I was 11, so my screen name was Hacu11 and I used that. My teacher came up behind me and kept saying ... Why do you hack? I know what your email really means... (Hac[k] [yo]u)... and so I figured what the hell, I might as well change it and reverted to the hotmail email my dad made me when I was 8. PavanDave@ the hot mail.

I have about 15 different emails from different organizations that all forward to my current email (except my Uni email) from my old school gamer emails from those regretful days of no lifeing online to the standard issue VicePresident@frat.chapter email, and the awesome thing is that people think I'm responding from each of those emails individually.

People think many emails is a waste, and often times it is, but you'd be surprised at the response I get from my robotics email about sponsorship vs my personal gmail among other things. It just makes life easy when people don't have to guess if this person is from xxx organization because your email does the talking for you.


Pavan Davé


.

[keehun]

Team 2502 assigns every one of their students/mentors with a first.last@team2502.com

Captains who set it up bypassed last name.

We also use that email address and password as a backend for an OpenID service where we use it to authenticate our forums. With that, we have email and forum working in same authentication table.

Thanks to Google Apps free edition.

[Boydean]

Originally Posted by keehun

Team 2502 assigns every one of their students/mentors with a first.last@team2502.com

Captains who set it up bypassed last name.

We also use that email address and password as a backend for an OpenID service where we use it to authenticate our forums. With that, we have email and forum working in same authentication table.

Thanks to Google Apps free edition.

Our team does the same. Staple members (team captain, mentors, PR group) has team email addresses that go on their business cards. We also took it a step further and setup a Google Voice account for the coach. This enables a easy transfer of 'power and communications' to another person in the time of crisis (that is if you look beyond the fact Google Voice number is free, therefore might disappear at any moment).

[Jon Stratis]

Originally Posted by typharn91

i actually have a question on this topic as to what to do. My last name happens to be gamer so im not sure how much of a profesional email address i can make using that what would the awesome people here think might be a smartish thing to do with that. Any help appreiceated

In almost all situations, you'll be giving out your e-mail address along with your name and other information about yourself. So long as you format everything properly, the first thing someone will see is your name - only later will they look at your e-mail address. And who knows, with a last name like gamer it might stick in their heads a bit more, or help you get noticed. The only time you might have a problem with it is if you are e-mailing someone you don't know out of the blue, but that doesn't happen too often "in the real world" - or if it does, you're doing it from an e-mail your company setup for you, or your school gave you, in which case the name doesn't matter, just the part after the @.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Emails, I have 3 of them, one forwards to the other the other is my work email that I am not allowed to forward. Schr4261@Some.University is my university email address, schreiaj@server is my personal address and Aschreiber@company is my work address. I personally like my schreiaj one, short and simple.

Along these lines please be careful what you post on FB or anywhere else on the internet. A determined person can find a lot of personal information using some carefully crafted searches. For example, I was trying to find a friend of mine's address (I had to pick them up but they had forgotten to give me their address) I knew the approximate area (zip code) and a name. These two pieces of information and 1 Google search gave me their address. Searching a name and a town will give you a lot of hits too. Heck, a search for my name returns a picture I didn't even know was taken as well as several news articles. Anyway, point being, be careful. I spent about 5 minutes and managed to find a pretty comprehensive list of my skills as well as about every scholarship I won to go to school (and my old cell phone number).

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Along these lines please be careful what you post on FB or anywhere else on the internet. A determined person can find a lot of personal information using some carefully crafted searches. For example, I was trying to find a friend of mine's address (I had to pick them up but they had forgotten to give me their address) I knew the approximate area (zip code) and a name. These two pieces of information and 1 Google search gave me their address. Searching a name and a town will give you a lot of hits too. Heck, a search for my name returns a picture I didn't even know was taken as well as several news articles. Anyway, point being, be careful. I spent about 5 minutes and managed to find a pretty comprehensive list of my skills as well as about every scholarship I won to go to school (and my old cell phone number).

Keep in mind that, in general, when you hit "submit" on any web site, it's findable forever. So don't go posting pictures of that wild party or whatever event you're at with the idea that you can delete them later and no one will ever know. You never know what will bite you in the butt later.

For example, there's a note on my Facebook account that pretty viciously attacks a school I attended. The note is the reason that I used the past tense, despite being intentionally hidden.

That being said, this xkcd expresses my thoughts on the matter rather well. (Contains strong language) I generally don't like having to pretend I'm something I'm not just because some judgmental jerk will think, "When he was 14 years old, he didn't like his high school! How can we hire him 20 years later?". Especially because I consider myself a mostly responsible person and generally don't do stupid things. I guess that's the way things are, though, so I'll watch what I say.