PTT: What to Do When You Lose the .edu

Professional Tip Tuesday

Choosing a new email address for the young professional. 

The dreaded day has come. My university email address is set to expire and I need to get an account of my own. So long to my very first 'professional' email address.

I should note my university address was preceded by the very first email address that I ever had. My mom set me up with QteAnna@aol.com in 3rd grade and I should have retired it many years ago. You can see why I became attached to my firstname-lastname.edu, classy, semi-grownup email.

Anyway now that I am saying goodbye to my university email, QteAnna won't cut it. So for this Professional Tip Tuesday I am including some of the major tips for picking a new email as a young professional.

Why keep the personal email professional?
It may seem obvious but these are just some good things to keep in mind. Even though you will have a work email, you will still want your private email to be professional enough to reach out to your network. Also if you decide to job search and reach out to future employers you may want to provide them with a permanent, personal email! Keep this email address on all your personal documents - personal business cards, resumes, etc.

The big things to think about when choosing a new email address..

1) Choose your preferred email domain - There are plenty of free websites to use that will host your email account. It seems one of the most popular is gmail. I went with that - but you can search for whatever best suits you.


2) Keep the email username simple! - Don't keep people wondering who the incoming email could be from.

• Use as much of your name as possible: i.e. Mary-Smith@gmail.com or mary.smith@gmail.com
• You may have to get creative with common names. Just try for a name people will recognize right away and that makes sense. 

Finally, the last tip with creating a new email address - update your network with your new contact information! 

• Give everyone you keep in touch with adequate warning that your email address is changing. Another good ideas is to try and set it up so that your old email address automatically forwards to your new one. 

So that's it for this Professional Tip Tuesday! Did anyone else have an embarrassing first email address like QteAnna? Comment below!