No matter how skilled or talented you think you are, practicing poor email etiquette can be detrimental to your career. Just last week, a top recruitment executive, Gary Chaplin decided he was fed up with the amount of spam he received and chose to reply to a job seeker in the worst way possible.
When Chaplin received a message from job seeker, Manos Katsampoukas, addressed to Chaplin and 4,000 others, he lost his patience and sent Katsampoukas an extremely rude reply. His unprofessionalism was made clear when he told the polite job-seeker to ‘F*ck off', insulted his intelligence and even criticized other recruiters included in the email chain. To hide his identity, Chaplin signed the message with the pseudonym, Richard Vickers, without realizing there was another person with the name of Richard Vickers working in the recruitment industry!
But then he made the biggest mistake of all. Chaplin hit Reply All.
And ironically enough, just days later Chaplin is the one looking for a job. He was asked to resign after his IP address was uncovered and the recruitment agency he worked for became aware of his horrible email etiquette.
Which brings me to the point of this blog: It's extremely important to practice good email manners.
Here are a few email etiquette guidelines I highly recommend:
- Include the proper greeting and salutation in all messages. Use your judgment on this one to decide what's appropriate in each situation.
- Include a relevant subject in the subject line and your actual message in the body of the email. Sounds simple, I know, but you'd be surprised how many people disregard this simple rule.
- Keep it short and sweet. If you need to discuss an in-depth matter, pick up the phone and speak directly about the subject. Email should be brief and to the point.
- Use spell-check AND proof-read your messages to make sure you don't send a message full of errors.
- Never send a message during a moment of anger. Waiting until you have cooled down to reply is always the best option.
- Most importantly, never send something you'd be embarrassed for someone else to see. Otherwise, you probably shouldn't be sending it.
And this etiquette goes for both the client and the employee, both the job-seeker and the hiring manager; all parties involved in email correspondence should be polite and exercise good email manners to ensure a prosperous and healthy relationship.
Unless you want to end up like Gary Chaplin, that is.