Help! Creating a professional Gmail username.
 

Hey guys,

I need to create a more "professional" email address for job searching and other things of that nature.

Unfortunately all variations of my name are taken, however if i were to add "mr." before my username, therefore making my gmail address "mr.abcdefg@gmail.com", my username would be available.

If my name were John J. Smith, my gmail would be "mr.jjsmith@gmail.com"

Is this too pretentious? too formal? my area of career is the business/corporate workplace environment so I guess it kinda fits.

Thoughts?

Have you tried other e-mail providers to get a more realistic/professional address?

If you specifically want a GMAIL address with your name, I wouldn't bother with the "mr" - it is IMHO pretentious.

Be creative, and search other posts in this forum on the same theme - there are many of them.

Have you tried lastnamefirst or last initial firstname?

Have you tried including your middle initial so firstmlast?

Unfortunately since Gmail has so many users, finding your name is getting harder. Have you thought about buying your own domain name?

Could anybody in this forum who is at the receiving end of jobs applications, confirm/deny that the email address has any influence on acceptance/rejection? Speaking of averages of course, has jsmith@jsmith.tld a better chance of getting to the next step than johnny@hotmail only because the former address is more "professional"?

Not from what I've seen. But this may depend on the company you apply in. I have seen resumes arrive with very silly names (of which they probably thought while drunk) followed by a Yahoo or Gmail address. Really silly stuff prior to the @ sign. They were hired for the job nevertheless.
I think the average company doesn't mind, there will be exceptions of course but I think a well written letter motivating why you want the job is more important than the "from" address.

The only thing I did hear is that some companies block Hotmail emails because they had too much spam in the past from Hotmail users. But again; we probably talk about a tiny minority of HR departments here.

If you wanna be sure how picky the company is; ask the job agency if it is a problem to use your Gmail for this application. They usually know the folks at the HR departments of the companies that they work with.

If you want to use Gmail, just stick a number on the end like everyone else does, and pay more attention to the rest of your resume. Of course you could always change your name. :)

You cannot have a really professional appearing email address with a free email account such as, Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook.com no matter what you choose as your user name. However, I personally think that of the free providers, Gmail conveys the most contemporary image. I like a user name that is similar to what you would get from a corporate email account such as john.walker, jmwalker, or walkerj for example. I definitely agree with others that having the prefix mr. as part of the user name is not good.
Your own domain might be better, more professional, if it were well chosen.
I agree with others that qualifications and content of the message are more important. What's even more important than all of that is who you are sending it to and whether or not they know you.

It is always professional to have your name and last name professional. My mentor once mentioned to make sure not to have a number in your email address. Unfortunately, I have had this email address for years now so I can't just change it but what I did instead was create a different email address solely for business without any number on it.

First.Lastname looks good.

Good idea anyway, numbers or no numbers.

Thanks! The no numbers just keeps the addy clean and professional.

Some guidelines
 

Hi, I believe that with the Internet being overcrowded, the availability of decent usernames for services like gmail and yahoo has reached a saturation point. Still, here are some guidelines to help you come up with a decent name:

1. Include no numbers. No phone numbers or date or birth
2. Always try to stick to this sequence - first name + last name
3. Include clever combinations of first and last name.

Oh yeah, I also recently read an article on how to choose good email names. You may take some reference from here. Hope that helps. :)

Regards,
James

If it's for business and you would use it a lot for professional work, I suggest just get a .com domain name (you can get one when you sign up for a website) and then get your custom e-mail so it would be like:

firstname@firstandlastname.com

or

hello@firstandlastname.com

That's how I got my e-mail since all variations of my name at gmail.com is already taken. Moreover, I get a website with it too which I use a lot for professional purposes. If you are curious, I got my custom email, domain, and website using hPage website builder (https://www.hpage.com) since it's the easiest way for me years ago when I was not yet a tech person.

Whatever you do, keep it short and easy to spell and type. I solicit and have to enter email addresses all the time, and we get a high error rate between the owner writing it down sloppily and/or the data entry person making an error. Too often I see something really clever that is hard to say, spell, and type and is bound to be entered incorrectly, meaning no email. Forget your first name plus your last name unless they are very generic and unlikely to be misspelled or mistyped. The absolute best email addresses are just your first name, if it is easy to spell and type, with a short domain name that is easy to spell and type. If it were available, something like sally@gmail.com would be perfect. Try to get your own domain, and make it short and really, really easy to spell and type. That's why you see lots of tech companies with short names that mean almost nothing, but sound catchy and are easy to spell and type. Think Gmail, Amazon, Twitter, etc.

The dot doesn't matter
 

With a Gmail address, the dot is ignored. You can use it if you want or like the way it looks, but Gmail's system parses it out anyway. John.Smith@gmail.com is the same as JohnSmith and johnsmith.