Forum: workplace.stackexchange.com
Tags: <professionalism><communication><ethics><email>
Title: Can I put the link to my personal website in my work email signature?
Question: I have a website that basically functions as a resume/project record where I list my various master degree research projects, personal projects, and work history.  Since I use my work email to communicate with many clients and maybe potential future employers, I would like to put a link to this website in my email signature for work.   Would this be considered professional?  Note: It isn't some sort of glorified MySpace page, it is a tasteful professional website to keep a log of my project history as an engineer.

Answers:
sents: text: No, you don't get to do your self-promotion via a work-email, unless the link points to an official source provided / hosted by the organization you work for.
text: Since I use my work email to communicate with many clients and maybe potential future employers [...] Stop doing that immediately if the purpose is to seek / influence/ communicate from the viewpoint of "potential future employers".
text: As per law in most of the cases, you're supposed to use company provided resources (yes, your email is one of them) for official work purposes, and searching for another job is not "official" work (i.e., you don't get paid for that).
text: Existing client or not, for getting in touch with potential employers, use your personal email address.
text: Client communication is just fine as long as it is limited to working communication / collaboration.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/61983/Sourav Ghosh
score: 101
sents: text: Definitely not, using work resources for personal promotion is not a good idea.
text: But there's nothing wrong with including a link to your personal site on your LinkedIn profile.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/4808/Steve
score: 18
sents: text: Many companies have policies or guidelines regarding email signature blocks.
text: So start there.
text: I would expect that even one without guidelines would not like employees to include a link to a site not related to their company or your project.
text: Since I use my work email to communicate with many clients and maybe potential future employers, I would like to put a link to this website in my email signature for work.
text: Don't try and talk to future employers with a email address of your current employer.
text: They don't like that.
text: You also don't want to lose your only way of communicating with future employers on your last day of work.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/127/mhoran_psprep
score: 5
sents: text: There is one exception to firm no provided by Sourav Ghosh .
text: If, and only if you work not as employee, but as an one-person company on B2B (business to business) agreement with your "employer" you may be allowed, or even required by law*, to disclose it.
text: And link to your business website may be acceptable way to do it.
text: Always consult your contact in your "employer" company before doing it.
text: They may have specific rules or guidelines about it.
text: *
text: I am not a lawyer.
text: If you don't know how it is for you, in your jurisdiction, you need a lawyer.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/45104/Mołot
score: 4
sents: text: This is a decent idea if you own your own company and the email address.
text: If you're not a business owner and you work for someone else, this is not the best idea.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 4
sents: text: No.
text: As an employer, the last thing I want to see is someone's personal website.
text: This indicates 'side projects,' which we all know are important and practical, but suggests (right or wrong) that the person is working on it during office hours.
text: I'm not a stickler, and hope everyone has a healthy work-life balance including keeping personal tabs during office hours, but don't put it on your office signature going out to my internal and external contacts.
text: Stop immediately is my advice to you as a member of an organization that is growing and supported by you.
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/34359/Mikey
score: 0
sents: text: Including anything more then your title(s) (PhD, etc) and perhaps certifications (CPA, etc) in your sig line is more then enough.
text: Nobody wants to see a hyperlink to your resume / projects ... and the folks that would (eg: internal team of researchers that collab on projects) would likely have alternate ways to go check that stuff out anyways.
text: It just seems lazy and unprofessional to have that included in the sig line on EVERY email sent from an account.
text: It's need-to-know information, and not every email will require that.
text: If I got an email from a person that had a link to a personal page that showed their CV or all the stuff they're working on in college.. and my correspondence with them required none of that..
text: I'd think the person was narcissitic or lazy.
text: Either they think they're so awesome they need to let everyone know how awesome they are.
text: Or, they're lazy and are using their email to pass along their resume to job hunts, and are just doing it for every email becasue
text: they're too lazy to take the 2 seconds to copy paste the link in ONLY on the emails to headhunters when needed.
text: I wouldn't need to see that stuff.
text: I just view this from a professional environment.
text: When I email people at work I don't have a link showing my resume and all the stuff I'm working on at my current job.
text: All my sig line includes is my name and maybe my job title and dept (depending on who I'm contacting).
text: In some situations I will purposefully not include job titles and dept just to see how forthcoming a person is with information, or to let the person know I'm making an informal inquiry (depends on what I'm doing at the company and what goal I'm trying to achieve).
text: You could also consider this detrimental to you if you fire off an email to someone you DON'T want to know that information.
text: And, including that kind of extracurricular info in every sig line of every email makes all recipients feel "unspecial".
text: Like, "Here's info about me, whether it's relevant to our correspondence or not...
text: I don't care about tailoring the message to you, it's all about me, me, me."
answer_details: author: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/99081/blahblah
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
You should not do this if you have an employer as self promotion via work email is not a good idea. If you have your own business then this would be a good thing to do.
The general consensus is that this is not a good idea. But if you are going to insist on including a personal link in your company signature, it would be best to consult with your boss first.