Hi, Leo.
Despite my aversion to Microsoft, I set up my first free e-mail account with Hotmail in February 2002 after learning that the 100-person local office of a now-defunct software company (acquired by HP in 2005) would be shut down and its operations outsourced to a firm in India.
(I got a 30-day notice that I would be losing my job as senior technical writer -- and permission to go to interviews during work hours -- but after being assured for the previous 30 days that the documentation department would not be affected by the lay-offs and would relocate to a smaller office space.)
Had I not been numb with shock, I would have created a separate "job-hunting" e-mail address with my ISP, which offers 5 e-mail addresses per account -- including the primary address.
An e-mail address on one's resume from a free e-mail service is considered unprofessional, and -- at least for a while -- many companies inundated with resumes actually screen out resumes that have e-mail addresses with free services (a "snobbery-based" filtering system).
At the time, Gmail was nonexistent. Initially, Gmail accounts were "limited" and by invitation only. It was simple to overcome this marketing-based "limitation," however, simply by signing up for an account and having Google send an activation code via SMS to one's cell phone: I had a Gmail account three months before Google notified me that I was "off the waiting list" and could sign up for a free Gmail account (of which I now have a few, each for a specific purpose).
(I will digress further by mentioning unscrupulous early Gmail account recipients selling or auctioning accounts, abusing the 50 invitations that one gets after using an account, which are solely marketing ploys now that Gmail accounts are readily available.)
Although I do still use that first Hotmail account to apply for jobs and update on-line resumes, I stay in touch with legitimate recruiters and employers via telephone, although initial contacts were made via this Hotmail account, in response to on-line resumes and applications, or e-mail messages with my resume attached.
If I am working on a salaried or contract basis writing documentation or designing Web sites, I often forget to check that Hotmail account. If the account is not accessed for 30 days, Microsoft (in a draconian effort to sell paid Web-mail subscriptions) purges ALL new, unread, or saved messages!
One positive aspect of that Hotmail account is that "spam bots" crawl on-line job and resume listing sites/databases, from Monster.com to Dice.com. The result is a Hotmail account that receives literally hundreds of "spam" messages per day now. There are also IT recruiting "farms" that use 'bots to search sites such as Dice.com for key words, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses: I am inundated daily with automated e-mail inquiries from recruiters from cities all over India.
These messages are not about positions doing technical writing or Web design, but are the result of an automated "hit" on a keyword in my resume, such as "Oracle" or "Perl." Every few months, I go through about a week of receiving phone calls from these very firms about short-term contract positions (sometimes two weeks or less) anywhere in the United States (often 2,000 or more miles away) based upon key words in such automated searches. I cannot understand the callers and they do not understand why I am not interested in relocating thousands of miles for a five-day contract position that would not pay enough for one-way airfare and for which I am not qualified. (Just because I administered a database server for documentation from 2000-2002 (with no demand in 2008 for skills specific to MS SQL Server 2000 and Oracle 8i) hardly qualifies me to administer Oracle 11g EE!
"Private" or "restricted" on-line resumes do not get responses, but "open" resumes (especially on non-specialized job sites) definitely generated spam, clueless inquiries, and unwanted phone calls.
For job-hunting purposes, I suggest Gmail if a person is determined to use a free e-mail service. Gmail's spam filtering is quite decent, the 'gmail.com' domain does not suffer from the professional stigma of most other free e-mail services, storage is vast, one can access Gmail via POP3/SMTP and IMAP, and Gmail accounts are not purged.
Setting up a Web-based account is also advantageous for travelers who cannot access their corporate or personal ISP's SMTP servers, but -- as several people have stated -- especially if one is a consultant or does contract work, in addition to salaried work, registering one's own domain -- with a professional Web site, and e-mail address using one's own domain, is a reasonable career enhancement. Fortunately, Network Solutions is no longer the only legitimate domain registrar that most people can recall, although so-called "free domains" are not true TLDs and should be avoided at all costs for professional use!
]]>
A comment on: Are free email services worth it?
Tech Questions?
Get Answers! -
Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
Leo's Answers Newsletter -
Ask Leo! in your inbox every week.
All content Copyright © 2008.
26-Dec-2011