It never occurred to me that using a Hotmail account affected my online presence, both professionally and personally!
When I began my career, Hotmail was one of the first web based email providers. Most emails were server based so you couldn’t access them unless you were on the school or company network. Internet at home, well, most of us didn’t have the service. It was important for me to have access to my personal email from anywhere I had access to the internet, which was school or work.
Things have changed and I still have my personal Hotmail email address. I heard and read that people are moving to Gmail but It’s all about simplicity with me. It’s just easier to have one email address. I use a PC and they are all on the Microsoft platform. When I opened up my West Coast Origami and Cindy Ho Designs, it was natural for me use Hotmail. Microsoft made it extremely easy to access them on the email program and keep them separated.
Reading this article, a lot of readers seemed outraged and dismissing the point. If one person is prejudiced to out-dated domain emails, there must be more who share this opinion. As a freelancer, I cannot afford to lose potential customers. Having that said, maybe those same potential customers may be more challenging to work with if they contacted me prior to reviewing my portfolio. Challenging or not, would you want to miss a chance on potential clients?
This article influenced me to get a Gmail account. Not that I’m happy about learning a new email system, but I’m working to build a good online presence.
As for recruiting a candidate for a important position in your company? Why would anyone dismiss a resume just because they had an ‘uncool’ email domain? Whether it’s Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, all it means is that person knows how to set up an account. Unless their user name is unprofessional like Ilovetogetdrunk, I don’t think it matters if that person uses Hotmail or Gmail would it?
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