Recruiting - Your Email Is Important

As a small business owner, I wear many hats.  President / Owner.  Janitor.  Human Resources Manager.  Payroll Manager.  Accountant.  The list goes on and on.  Wearing various hats equates to very little "free time."  I have to be diligent with my time and try to manage my schedule as efficiently as possible.  I am not the best janitor in the world, nor the best accountant, but I must be effective - otherwise my business suffers.  As such, when it comes to recruiting, I look for those that understand my "many hat" conundrum and in turn make it easy for me to consider them as a potential candidate for employment.  I can train someone in insurance.  I can train someone to sell financial services.  I can not train common sense.  In my office, everyone is in sales.  Even if you are not working in a sales position here, everyone is still in sales.  Every conversation, every email, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to enhance our relationship and let our customers know how important they are to us.  We need to make it easy on our customers to do business with us.  In example, they should not have to hunt for our phone number or contact information.  It should be readily available on every email we send.  Likewise, do not make it difficult for me to find you as a candidate for employment.  Nor should I have to guess what your real name is, where you live nor how to get a hold of you.  Easily.  Here are a few of the things I see on a recurring basis that make me skip over resumes / applicants: - Your email address should reflect your actual name.  If your name is "John Smith" your email should appear as John.Smith@EmailProvider.comor something along those lines.  Additionally, your name should appear in the "From" field as your actual name.  "Gamer Johnny" is not very professional, nor searchable.  - Along the same lines as the point above, your name should appear in correct font.  rY@N y0uNg is okay if you're 13 years old.  Not if you're 23 and applying for a career.  Capitalize the first letter of both your first and last name.  I can't tell you how many times I see partial names and even full names that show up as all lower-case letters.  - List your phone number in your email signature.  Don't make it difficult for me to get in touch with you.  I am not lazy, I can absolutely search for your resume and get it from there.  However, just as we try and make it easy for our customers to get in touch with us, we need Team Members in my office that naturally understand it's vitally important to be easily accessible.  This is my first installment.  If you are a Kennesaw State University student (or any college student in GA) and you find this helpful, please let me know.  Additionally, I'll be glad to help critique your resume / cover letter.  Ryan Young State Farm Agent ryan@talktoryan.com http://www.TalkToRyan.com