As a career coach I get countless inquiries and requests to respond to prospects’ needs for career advice and related topics. Having now worked with several thousand clients I have codified my first impressions by how they approach me with their request to take the next steps. First impressions are important, not just for how I see where a person’s head is at, but also how they come across to others when using the same approach in their other interactions. This blog is about the 10 most annoying behaviors (not in any particular order) that can be changed to show your professionalism in all your interactions. Make sure your email identity has some logic and a good way to connect with your name. If you are Jim Smith have your email address as Jimsmith@gmail.com, not as lostinSV@gmail.com. Also, sign your email exactly as your full name. So, do not sign your email as “Nutsy,” your nickname, but as Jim Smith (full name). This way if someone forwards or copies your message they will know whom it is from. People will remember you by name, and in today’s emails their name will pop up as soon as you tap the first few characters from your memory. So, ensure that when someone wants to send you an email make it easy for them to rely on this facility to get your address right. If your name and email address are disconnected (lostinSV@gmail.com = Jim Smith) the sender has to spend time making that connection. Not good. No one has time for long, text-heavy emails with no clear “what do I do with this?” Have your actions you want the reader to take from your email at the top. “Please respond to the following” and then have short itemized list of things you want the reader to do. They can then decide whether to read the rest of the long message. When leaving a voice mail keep it short and always begin with your coordinates: “This is Jim Smith, 510-333-3456.” Then end your short message AGAIN with your number to call. With ubiquitous mobile phones, messages get dropped, garbled, or difficult to hear. Often, too, people call from one line and want you to call them back on another. So, even after digging through the number of the original call when numbers get garbled, this does not help. The most frustrating messages are long at the end of which there is an inaudible phone number. Keep them short sandwiched between the call-back number. ALWAYS have your voice greeting with your name and a short message. It is annoying when, after deciphering a garbled phone message, you dial the person, whose name is barely audible in your voice mail to you, and you get a robotic greeting: “You have reached 555-222-2345.” With the ubiquity of mobile devices people often call on the move and they do not remember the number they just dialed, so having a voice greeting with your name assures the caller that they have reached the right person and now they will also know your name, if the original message garbled it. So, do not look too lazy to change your robotic voicemail greeting and replace it with a short named greeting; it’s the only professional way. Call yourself and see how many rings it takes to roll over to voice mail. In the case of one recent contact, who wanted me to call urgently her phone rang 16 times before it rolled over to voice mail. I was tempted to hang up after 10, but decided to see how long it would take. Try to keep the number of rings to three to save time and to prevent callers from hanging up before voice mail kicks in. If your voice mail greeting is long and you provide many options as a part of that message, it can save callers’ time if you give them a prompt to bypass the greeting the next time they call. Say, “ to bypass the greeting push #. On your LinkedIn Profile have your headshot (preferably, not a selfie) that clearly shows your face. I have seen photos of groups of people; someone standing in front of a major monument, which takes most of the space on that photo; picture of their favorite god figures; and even of just their pets (not holding their pet, but their pet’s headshot). Such images may work on social media such as Facebook, but on LinkedIn; NO! Avoid using your job title as your headline on your LinkedIn Profile. Such banal descriptors show a lack of imagination. Brand yourself with your headline and phrase it descriptively enough to make it searchable (you have 120 characters). Use the same name in all your identifiers, at least professionally: Your email name must match your LinkedIn Profile name and anywhere else that you want people to locate you professionally. It is annoying when people casually say, Oh, my LinkedIn name is my maiden name and now go by ex-husband’s last name as my email identifier, but I use my mother’s maiden name on my résumé, since she passed away 10 years ago. Just pick a name and stay with it. Make it consistent throughout ALL your professional identity. The concept behind streamlining your messaging stems from respecting other people’s time and getting them to respond to your needs. By following these 10 guidelines (and others) you can make yourself appear more professional, which will make it easy for others to respond to you! Good luck!