Want a job? Lose the 'wacky' e-mail

Job applicants who use 'wacky' e-mail addresses are far less likely to get the position, according to a poll of U.K. human resources managers.

Yahoo Mail discovered that the majority of HR managers will just disregard an application if it comes from an address that casts the applicant in a less-than-serious light. Two of the examples provided by Yahoo were "elvisthechicken2003" and "LarryLoonyLamb."

While most people now find it difficult to find an Internet service provider that can provide "yourname@ISP.com," due to the fact that most common names--and even most not-so-common names--have been taken, Alick Mighall, head of production at Yahoo Mail, urged users to play it straight when choosing their e-mail address.

"Applicants with wacky e-mail addresses may stand out from the crowd--but probably to their detriment, in the workplace. It's best to keep your e-mail boring and businesslike when job-hunting," Mighall said.

Surprisingly, however, the answer may not be to send your r?sum? from your work e-mail address. While the convention is invariably sensible, 36 percent of HR managers believed that it was inappropriate and may harm the chances of the applicant.

In addition, sending r?sum?s from work is a common cause of "digital blunders." A r?sum? may be sent internally by accident, or it may be picked up by system administrators in the event of some kind of network problem or wrongly addressed reply.

Mighall said that "at best, job applicants who send their (r?sum?s) from their work e-mail will be seen to have poor judgment. At worst, they will be earmarked as potential e-mail abusers, especially since many companies are tightening up on their internal e-mail rules."

The survey found that only 9 percent of HR managers polled would take no action if they discovered an employee using a work e-mail address to look for another job.

To that end, more than a quarter (26 percent) said they would start monitoring the employee's e-mail address more closely if they believed the work e-mail was being used for sending out job applications.