What email address is right for my job search?

JuliePower589@gmail.com didn’t sound memorable enough for my newly-updated resume or job application.

I’ve seen folks use email addresses and handles like fabcookandmotherroftwins@gmail.com and SexyLongLegs@Hotmail.com for job applications or on LinkedIn, but call me old fashioned, but it doesn’t seem professional enough to me …

If I use one of my existing email addresses, such as JuliePowerwritereditor@gmail.com,  it limits me to a narrow band of media jobs in a contracting market. (Besides, the password is lost, never to be retrieved again.)

So I tried to find a new Gmail address, using my first and last names, as recommended by most experts. Google’s Gmail confirmed that I am one of many Julie Powers. To differentiate from the other Julie Powers out there, including the Super Hero,  Julie Power AKA Lightspeed,  Gmail suggested:

Julie Power 4 is the best of a bad lot. The rest are totally forgettable and hard for an HR person to recall. When I considered using one of my existing Rocketmail email addresses,  a good friend asked if I’d heard of Google. Ouch. That’s not a good look for someone like me touting her new media skills.

I asked what HR experts thought of something like HireJuliePower@gmail.com.

Catchy? Silly?

Julie Power, lightspeed, can do anything.

Is it unprofessional? Or is it just the thing to stand out in the inbox of that jaded HR expert? For feedback, I went to the MomstoWork brain trust, our Twitter followers:

@MomsToWork

The very helpful @PrettyPinkPro (must ask her whether this is her email because it conjures up other versions of pros to me, if you get my drift), replied:

I responded:

@MomsToWork MomsToWork.com

She replied at length, arguing that it was too much of a gamble that it would be seen as gimmicky.

As background, four months ago we sold our house in Maryland, USA, quit our jobs, took the kids out of school, and moved back to Australia after 16 years in the USA. While I am not in a rush to go back to work, I do have to update my American resume and find a fresh email address, just in case the perfect job comes along.

What kind of email address do you use for finding a job? What’s the silliest email address you’ve seen? The dumbest you’ve seen on a resume?

Tell me before I go with WillWorkforLittleinExchangeforFlexibleKidFriendlyHours@Helpme.com

If you’re asking the same question, check out the tips posted below from Jumpstart Your Job Search.

	Does your e-mail address project the right image? Your e-mail should not be silly or playful, but professional. Do not use cute or “personal” e-mail addresses like queenmother@abc.com, JohnsonFamily@123.com, harleyhunk@abc.com, cat-luvR@)xyz.com, and so on.
	Is your e-mail address short and intuitive? Avoid e-mail addresses with long strings of numbers and letters. Try to select an e-mail address that’s easy to remember and get the shortest e-mail address you can find.
	Does your e-mail address include digits like L, I, 0, or O? The digit 0 looks like the letter O and a non-capitalized L (l) looks like a capitalized i (I). Avoid using these letters and digits.

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photo credit: mollyollyoxenfree

What kind of work are you searching for?

On MomsToWork, we’ve written extensively about women and work – how to find a job, write a cover letter and resume, interviewing tips and more. But I’ve always hoped to take this a step further and to start connecting people with the jobs they really want to do.

In the spirit, this post is an open job thread. Post your (anyone can post, not just Moms) experience and what you’re looking for and let’s see if we can connect you with someone who can help.

Note: We’ll be tweeting – and otherwise promoting – this post periodically throughout the coming weeks, we’d appreciate your help too!

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Sign up for the free MomsToWork newsletter and receive updates and exclusive deals just for Moms like you.

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photo credit: imperiousimages

The report, Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being, released yesterday, is said by the White House to be the most comprehensive report on the state of women in 50 years.

There is nothing surprising really in the report. Most of us know the data. What is surprising, shocking and appalling is that it is 50 years since the last major report on women like this.

Are we only 75% as important as men? (see data below on women’s earnings compared with men)

It is only fitting that the report was released on the first day of Women’s History Month, with the theme: “Our History is Our Strength.”

We need more accounting of how we are changing and how we are not. And someone needs to be held accountable.

In a statement, Valerie Jarrett, chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, said:

“The Obama Administration has been focused on addressing the challenges faced by women and girls from day one because we know that the success of women and girls is vital to winning the future. Today’s report not only serves as a look back on American women’s lives, but serves as a guidepost to help us move forward.”

Let’s hope this report, showing where we are right now, will lead to real change for our daughters and friends.

Because there is no real equality in sight in my lifetime or yours … unless you are very young … given the rate of change revealed in the White House‘s major report on women released yesterday.

Even if I live to a ripe old age, as more women than men will do, the report shows women like me are more likely to die old and poor.

Women made 75% as much as their male counterparts in 2009, across all educational levels, confirmed the report released yesterday.

Women are having babies later, getting married less and later and doing better at school but they’re still lagging behind men when it comes to earning power, confirms the White House report. And men and women still tend to work in different occupations, with three times as many women working in administrative jobs than men and few women working in finance or construction.

For my female friends in finance, there is some good news. The number of women has increased from 9% to 14%.

Men and women also have equal access to workplace flexibility but more women work part-time more than men.

Even if you don’t have time to read the entire report, glance down the list of chapters (formatted for the web-savvy reader who likes to skim and bounce ) and you’ll be better informed. The White House will be releasing the report in bite-sized chunks during Women’s History Month.

There’s plenty to read on the report, including by these commentators:

• The New White House Report on Women, and What We Have to Stop Complaining About (blogs.forbes.com) Momstowork commentary: Ali Brown’s account annoyed me. Yes, more women should launch their own businesses, as she suggests, instead of whining about the system, but not every woman is suited to running her own business or wants to do that. But how many small businesses fail? More than succeed each year, and that’s a risky proposition for many women without resources.  She also says the masculine model sucks for us. Yes, but it sucks for many men too. We need to preach that work life fit is something that benefits men and women, those with children and without, to effect a change. We need to stop making this a women’s issue but a people’s issue.

• “White House Study on Women: Not That Much Has Changed” and related posts (blogs.howstuffworks.com) Cristen Conger reports, “From the looks of it, though, the major report finding is that there is no major finding. The outlook for women is a mixed bag, not surprisingly. As we’ve been hearing for a while now, women outnumber men in college — and yet the gender pay gap persists. Women outlive men, but we’re more likely to face a range of healthcare issues, including lack of insurance coverage as well as higher rates of depression and obesity. And though violent crimes against women have dropped, problems with intimate partner violence and stalking persist.”
• Women Gain in Job Market, Lag on Pay, White House Report Says – Bloomberg (news.google.com)
• The Caucus: White House Issues Report on Women in America (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being | The White House (kingstonaauw.blogspot.com)
• “Women’s History Month 2011″ and related posts (andersonatlarge.typepad.com)
• Women Ahead Everywhere but Pay (abcnews.go.com)
• Women Advance, Still Lag on Wages (online.wsj.com)
• More women go to college, but wage gap remains – MarketWatch (news.google.com)
• The State of American Women (blogs.wsj.com)
• More women go to college, but wage gap remains (marketwatch.com)

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Your crazy life with a work-obsessed spouse and loudmouth children could make your family the next Jon and Kate-style reality TV show stars! Read on … I just got this email, which made me laugh. My comments are in italics.

Life-changing new docu-series (is that we call reality TV these days?) that empowers real families to rediscover what family (yes, your family really isn’t a family until a TV expert fixes you up, think Super Nanny) is all about.

This groundbreaking new series (so shockingly different from the other shows cast by the same company like Fairy Job Mother and Shedding for the Wedding) is about people who find it a challenge to maintain a healthy balance between their family and work lives. (Point taken. I am writing this while NOT supervising my children’s homework. My husband is still at work.  Better go.)

If you answer, “YES” to any of the following questions, you are not alone. We would love to speak to you and hear your story:

Is your spouse a workaholic?

Only when he wants to avoid me.

Has your spouse missed major milestones in your kids lives?

Projectile vomit clean up? Yes.

Do you miss having dinner as a family?

We eat dinner together so often it is a relief to miss it occasionally.

Do your kids always complain that you or your spouse is never home or available?

Nope, go out Mom!

Is it hard for your spouse to put the computer or cell phone down and enjoy family time? Are you watching me right now?

Are you ready for your spouse to put your family life first and create the balance you need to raise a happy, healthy family?

That sounds like way too much togetherness.

We are looking for families who:

• Live in Southern California.
• Have a minimum of 2 children between the ages of 7-17.
• Have a workaholic parent that needs a new perspective on life.
• Families with expressive and opinionated children who have a strong reaction to their parents overwhelming responsibilities at work.

EMAIL US NOW AT:

Castingtimeout@gmail.com

Please include your name, address, occupation, contact phone numbers, email addresses, a recent photograph of you and your family, and a brief summary of how the workaholic parent has effected the family dynamic.

For more information, please contact MysticArt Pictures.

818.563.4131 or visit www.mysticartpictures.com.

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You can’t afford to skip Twitter if you are a job seeker. These days, the social media network acts as a mega job aggregator, bringing together thousands of recruiters, job sites and job hunters.

Twitter can fast-track a job search if you’re a mom returning to work after a gap at home, a SAHM who needs money quick or a working parent who’s trying to change jobs.

Why? It’s quick and concise. You get the information you need if you follow the right peeps. Translation? You can skim hundreds of job tweets quickly.

Career sites like Monster are using Twitter to match job seekers with potential jobs, and vice versa. Monster even does twitter style matchmaking, where you tweet what you want and they’ll match you up. They’ve been tweeting jobs on Fridays using the #HireFriday hashtag.

Here are 15 fabulous and fruitful ways to find a job on Twitter:

1. Follow accounts that tweet jobs and advice…we can think of at least one.
2. Research if your local paper has a Twitter job feed. It seems that these days nearly every news organization has their own Twitter job feed.
3. Follow Twitter accounts like TwitJobSearch, a job search engine built just for Twitter. When we searched, there were over 11,000 jobs available just for RNs. A search for marketing manager delivered over 67,000 positions. See this result.
4. Post your resume on TweetMyJobs, a social media site for job seekers and recruiters using Twitter, or TweetMyResume.



5. Get to know hashtags. Even searching Twitter using the hashtag #job, you’ll find hundreds of different positions vacant and Twitter accounts that are advertising jobs.
6. Search for recruiters and companies that post jobs in your region, such as Canada Job Search and BuildingJobsUK.
7. Follow companies you are targeting on Twitter. For example, Citibank posts vacancies using the CitiJobs account as does Sodexo. Hundreds of other companies are using Twitter, too, reports TheUnderCoverRecruiter who has compiled a mega list of companies posting jobs on Twitter, broken up into niches. Another good list, curated by Susan Joyce of JobHuntOrg, is EmployersRecruiting.
8. Follow accounts that tweet in your niche such as the account, GetInternisJobs, which tweets jobs in Internal Medicine, and EmailJobs for jobs in email marketing, etc.
9. Look for Twitter accounts that may specialize in jobs that suit your lifestyle. Use Twitter’s search function to find part-time jobs such as this list or another list of jobs for moms at search.twitter.com. But be careful. There are lot of spammers and scammers targeting moms with bogus work from home, get rich by 3 p.m. when your kid gets off the bus…
10. Use Twitter for intelligence and insider information on your target companies such by using Twitter search. See how this search for jobs at Zappos brings up a little trove of info.
11. Fall in love with Twitter lists, where users create their lists of people to follow in their area. You don’t need to create your own list of top HR folks and recruiters. Just check out the lists already created by others in that niche. For example, MonsterCareers has created several lists including @MonsterCareers/monster-com @MonsterCareers/hiring-leaders @MonsterCareers/career-advice.
12. Learn to love hashtags, as overused as they are. They let you track a discussion, an idea or a group of folks. See this post by CareerRocketeer on how to use the top 100 job hashtags in your job search.
13. Follow the job experts and HR consultants who LOVE LOVE LOVE Twitter judging by the amount they tweet. Start your search with this list of 150 top experts by CareerRocketeer.
14. Twitter novice? Start with The Beginner’s Guide To Finding A Job With Twitter by the JobMob.
15. Connect and follow execs in companies on your target list using ExecTweets. For example, click on the list of retail execs and you’ll hit a list including Virgin’s Richard Branson. My favorite tool to find and connect with people is Twellow because it is highly segmented and it’ll suggest people for you to follow based on your search. Say you are interested in finding a job at a nonprofit in Kentucky… well, that search turned up a page of results with valuable info.

Bonus idea: Follow us on Twitter at MomstoWork and Like us on Facebook. We’ll love you back. Thanks!

Do you have a success story? Share it with us please by leaving a comment below.

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Who hasn’t asked for help! Applying for a job is hard, and sometimes it helps to use a cover letter sample or a cover letter template to get started.

Here”s a great one from Nancy Anderson (@Nancy_1 on Twitter) of BlackBird Learning Associates provided this template, which any mom (or dad) looking for a new job can use.

You can see it uses two-columns.

Here’s a structure you can use for your next job application. Thanks Nancy!
_______________________________________________________________________________________

Proper Salutation/Address Information                                                        Date

Dear Mr. /Ms. Last Name;

Your open position on the (company) website calls for many of the abilities I have developed in my 10 years of Human Resources experience.  My background indicates experience and successful implementation of a number of innovative recruiting processes with (company) including:

There are other areas of my background including my educational background, solid social networking and employee referral abilities, on-boarding program design and organization skills that may also be of interest to you.  I look forward to the opportunity of meeting with you personally to discuss how I might fit into your organization.

Sincerely,

Name

Phone number

Your email address

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When Kristen Clark, an HR professional, returned to work after the birth of her first child, a daughter now four, she didn’t mention the gap in her resume when she’d been at home.

In retrospect, she thinks that was a mistake.

“I used to have an empty space on my resume, which I would openly explain during interviews, but I am sure that there were many times that my resume was disregarded before that point.”

Why did she decide to go with the most conventional description?

“I only added the “stay at home mom” line after I began my current position and saw the many negative things that are hidden in employment gaps (i.e, long stretches of unemployment following a nasty termination),” Kristen explained.

Kristen had written a blog post about how to address employment gaps, “To tell you the truth,” and thought she should heed “my own advice and not look as though I was hiding something.”

“When I was ready to go back to work after being at home, I did not have anything to fill that gap on my resume, and I think that my resume was probably passed over many times as someone who had just been unemployed for a long period of time.”

Are these terms right for a resume? Chief of Home Operations, Stay at home parent, full time parent/mom, house manager?

Should a mom returning to paid work outside the home use a title like Chief of Home Operations (COHO) or home manager in their resume to cover the period when she was a home looking after children or even elderly relatives?

Kristen says:  “As for the term ‘stay at home mom,’ I have seen many variations (stay at home parent, full time parent/mom, house manager), but many of those feel to me like women are trying to overcompensate … as though the role of Mom isn’t good enough.”

“That’s what I did during that period: I was a Mom who stayed at home with my daughter.”

“And now I am a Mom who works in an office during the day. The term is simply a preference for me.”

Our thanks to Kristen for generously providing her resume as an example for other women. Yeah!

Download Kristen’s Resume >>

If you’d like to help other moms returning to the workplace, please send us a copy of your resume (julie@momstowork.com) and we’ll post it.

It may also be a way to get publicity if you are job seeker!!!

Follow Kristen on Twitter.

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A bathroom is not the right place for nursing mothers. If your boss thinks it is okay, tell him or her to go eat their lunch in there.

A new fact sheet makes this clear. Employers are required to provide “a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk,” say new Department of Labor nursing guidelines.

Employers are required to provide “reasonable break time for an employee to express breast milk for her nursing child for 1 year after the child’s birth each time such employee has need to express the milk,”  it says.

If you are returning to work after the birth of a baby, it may pay to take some time to get acquainted with a fact sheet on break times for nursing moms issued by the Department of Labor.

Breastfeeding/nursing/expressing at work …  know your rights

It addresses the new break time requirement for nursing/breastfeeding mothers mandated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

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Our guest blogger, Julie Cole, is a force! She runs Mabel’s Labels,has six kids and, somewhat remarkably, appeared sane and balanced in my short meeting with her at BlogHer2010.  We convinced her to debunk four common myths facing female entrepreneurs …

Maternity leave gives women the opportunity to step away — if only temporarily — from the traditional workforce. But suddenly, baby’s first birthday is around the corner and it’s time to start planning. The questions begin: Where will baby go to daycare? How will I transition from being a stay at home mom to being a working mom?

A strange phenomenon can occur at this point – Mama starts thinking about alternatives.

Julie Cole, mompreneur, with one of her six children, Clancy

Maybe she has an urge to stay-at-home or perhaps a small business idea, which has been nagging at her seems possible. This is where more questions arise. The timing is perfect, but can it happen? What would her family think? How could they afford to have her drop out of the workforce? Is she willing to take the risk? Where would she start?

Speaking as a weathered Mom Entrepreneur, I thought it appropriate to share some of my Mabel’s Labels experiences.

Over seven years ago, Mabel’s Labels was created when I got together with three other moms and we put our clever little business plan into action. Mabel has felt like another child we have nurtured along with our other children.

The 4 big myths

We belong to a huge network of Mama customers, friends and entrepreneurs — here are some of the thoughts that swirl around taking the plunge into becoming a Mom Entrepreneur.

MYTH No. 1: I am going to have more time to spend with my beautiful children. I will be able to talk to customers while the baby naps, breastfeed while reading reports, and go on play-dates around meetings. I may even volunteer at the nursery school co-op a couple of mornings a week!

REALITY: While you may have more time with the children, you don’t actually have more time. What you now have is flexibility. Flexibility is what allows you to drop the kids off at school or go to the park in the afternoon. What it doesn’t do is get your work done and tuck you into bed at a decent hour. Trading time for flexibility has its drawbacks. The play-date you do in the afternoon equals sitting at the computer til the wee hours. The result is a pretty exhausted Mom Entrepreneur, which can make that activity you do with the kids less enjoyable for everyone.

As for thinking you will make phone calls during nap time — you may need to re-consider that one. If your children are like mine, they have an internal sensor that notifies them when there is an important phone call being made. In my experience, this career path is best suited to those who are not too hung up on getting sleep and are very functional without it.

MYTH No. 2: It will be fantastic to be my own boss and set my own rules. I won’t be accountable to anyone or have to report what I’m doing or where I’m going. Bring on the freedom!

REALITY: It’s true you are not likely going to fire yourself, but that is where the job security ends. If you’re not accountable to everyone you have business dealings with, the business will fail. So while there may not be one single boss breathing down your neck, there will be numerous other “bosses” who hold even more power — the ability to make or break your business. At Mabel’s Labels, our list of “bosses” is endless and includes customers, staff, suppliers, business partners, just to name a few. Suddenly one nagging boss doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

MYTH 3: I don’t have the money to start a business

REALITY: Clearly this aspect will be different for every business plan, but don’t assume that because you want to start a business it’s going to cost a bomb. Many Mom Entrepreneurs have started successful businesses on buttons and pocket lint. Women are not inclined to go to banks and get big loans to start a business. We prefer to hit up the people close to us – parents, husbands, partners, neighbors, innocent by-standers. Many successful Mom Entrepreneur start-ups are the direct result of “love money.”

“Many successful Mom Entrepreneur start-ups are the direct result of love money,” says Julie Cole, founder of Mabel’s Labels.

So before writing yourself off as an Entrepreneur, sit down and budget what you need to start your business. You may be surprised by the resources you can tap.

MYTH 4: Working alone will be isolating. I’ll miss interacting with adults and the office social scene.

REALITY: You may not be attending power lunches or catching after work drinks on a Friday, but you are hardly alone. The Internet provides Mom Entrepreneurs endless opportunity to research, network, blog, message and Facebook. It allows you to communicate with customers, peers, colleagues, moms and experts. The best part is no one will ever know that you are doing it all from the comfort of your home while wearing pajamas soaked in sour milk. The Internet provides resources that never clock out. Once ensconced in the Mom Entrepreneur scene, you quickly discover the invaluable network the Internet provides both professionally and socially.

Is the Mom Entrepreneur lifestyle for you? That may be up for debate. It is certainly not for everyone and there is a lot to consider. For me the answer was clear — though you can often find me hunched over my computer well-past midnight, I wouldn’t trade foggy-brained afternoon playdates for anything.

Julie Cole is the Co-Founder of Mabel’s Labels Inc. and the mother of six. She blogs at Mabelhood and the BabyMachine. Find her on twitter: @juliecole

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