Pops wants me to use my Gmail account for job postings… but I’ve already worked so hard on setting up my Email with Purelymail and a custom domain. I’ve never had an issue of my Email getting flagged as spam before, but in this instance I sent him a zip file with no message body and it was sent straight to spam.
My question is: would you bother using Gmail just to ensure your Email replies to interested HR people don’t get sent to the spam bucket? In my opinion, the use of a custom email address indicates flair to potential hiring teams - because it shows that you are capable of setting that stuff up. BTW my TLD is Senegal (.sn) to phonetically match my last name (it’s a really cool email) but the actual name header displays as my full name just like any other email address would.
I think the issue was just your blank email with an attachment.
I have a custom domain email and I’m actively applying to places and have had no issues getting mostly rejection emails back. 🥲
I’ve also gotten a few interviews, so I think you’re fine.
Especially .zip attachments. Something like a .docx or .txt attachment might be fine while .exe and .zip and a few others will trigger spam filters.
I’ve gotten all 4 jobs I’ve had so far using my custom domain.
It should be fine as long as you don’t send actual spam or suspicious looking stuff, and the hosting is set up correctly (dmarc, dkim, and all that), which it should if you’re having a provider host it.
Actually no those are a few of the things you actually need to set up if you manage the domain, nvm about that part
Are you aware that you can edit comments on Lemmy?
Yes
The blank email with a zip attachment and coming from a Senegalese domain is Chinese/Soviet Union-flag levels of “red flags”. I’d be shocked if that made it through any half-decent mail filter. If you truly want to test the spamminess of your mail system, try it again with an email that mimics the ones you’d actually be sending to the recruiters. I bet that would go through just fine.
That being said, if you aren’t confident in your mail system, just use Gmail. There’s billions of dollars supporting that system, so you can pretty much count on it to work.
I doubt company recruiters looking for full-time employees will care about your email domain as long as it works. However, if you’re trying to land contracts as an independent consultant then absolutely a custom domain for your firm shows a level of invested professionalism, in my opinion.
It may be as simple as having sent an attachment without a body.
First off, are your DMARC, DKIM, and SPF all setup right?
Next, see of you can test any delays, like if you have another account, have someone email both and see if there’s any difference.
Yep, those are set up correctly. PM has a wizard to check if they are.
OK, then it’s definitely your blank email from a .sn TLD with an empty message body. That’s like 3 huge red flags. The .sn TLD shouldn’t be a deal breaker, but it means you will always be scrutinized and need to make any emails with links or attachments look like they’re not spam unless the sender and you have some established back and forth already.
If it were me, I would start up as many free temp addresses as I can and send test emails to them that don’t look sketchy AF (text in the body only, then text with a link, then text with a PDF attachment) and see if you get the same results. If you have gmail addresses you can can access to use as well, be sure you use that. The problem with Gmail (in my experience at least) is that once an address pings for spam, it’s spam until someone else manually says “oh, no, not spam.” Possibly person by person. I’ve had to rescue more emails from spam than received spam to my inbox I had to dump to the spam folder. I have no idea, but other filters might work the same way.
Thank you, this is really good advice.
Definitely make sure all of those are set up properly. I would also look up the IP address of your mail server on services like this. It’s possible your ISP/provider has a bad email reputation, and if that’s the case then there’s not a whole lot you can do short of switching providers or using a third party SMTP relay that has a good reputation, like smtp2go.com.
I personally use proton and even that can cause issues sometimes.
It’s sad but in reality your best bet is a common email provider such as Google, Microsoft, etc.
You can use gmail with a custom domain and get both benefits, or you could go your own way and accept that it will reduce some of your potential opportunities (that’s what I choose)
Many email providers blacklist large parts of the internet for spam protection. When I switched from hosting my own email (doing SPF, or whatever existed back then) to paying fastmail to host my email a lot more email started going through. fastmail is large enough and has a good enough reputation that nobody can afford to block emails from them. I still have my own personal domain most people who email me have no clue that I’m not hosting it. I’d advise the same thing, pay fastmail to host your email, it doesn’t cost much and everything works.
There are companies other than fastmail that does this as well. Some of them are just as good, pick whichever you want.
OP, what bluGill said is exactly your problem (assuming your DMARC and friends are setup correctly).
The concept is referred to as “email (or domain) reputation”. The implementation details are closely guarded secrets, unique for each email receiver.
One of the metrics for establishing a positive email reputation the “How much email does your mail server sends?” : the more the better**
If you’re a large company, it’s fine… but if it’s just a personal domain with < 20 per week, you’re not going to establish a reputation and (depending on the receiver) you’re email might just get dropped.
The other (frequent) metric is: “Of the emails that are sent, how many are read, and how many are flagged as spam?” In order, for these crowd sourced spam filters to work, they need you to send large amounts of email. Receivers like Gmail/Google are pretty forgiving. However, Outlook/Microsoft are very aggressive, meaning if enough outlook users flag your email as Spam, then future emails sent to outlook from your domain will probably automatically be marked as spam. Obviously, these are all black boxes, so I can only offer my personal observations (take it worth a grain of salt).
As bluGill mentioned, there is a solution, but it involves moving your custom domain to a larger (re: paid) email provider. If you were to move to Google (for example), it doesn’t matter if your custom domain sends 5 emails per week. Those 5 emails are being sent from Google mail servers (using your custom domain) , which means they’re gaining the “reputation” of google and you can be certain that your emails will arrive, even if it’s (non-obvious) spam. Because, the email receiver assumes that Google will shut you down, if you’re a spammer.
It’s a sad state that one of the original “pillars of the internet” (email) has degraded to feed only the big tech companies… but unfortunately this has been the case for many years.
I use gmail, and so do most people applying for jobs at my company. It’s all but guaranteed to work and that’s the most important thing.
You’ve got to be absolutely positive that your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are set up correctly and working. The , you need to monitor it like a hawk to make sure that you’re not blacklisted, but beyond that, should be OK. Your email domain could get you into the junk folder depending on the curmudgeonliness of the company’s admin etc.
An own domain sounds more professional than a Gmail.
Alternatively , there is a couple of legit privacy friendly e-mail provider, can’t you use them instead?
