Part of what Gmail offers with their email is the ability to put a plus (+) sign between your real email address and the @ (at) symbol to create an extended and unique email address from your regular Gmail email address.

I’ve seen a few web sites you may try to use this process on that will either error out and ask you to re-enter an email address or it can’t process it due to back-end programming issues that can’t handle the plus (+) sign properly in the middle of an email address, but for the most part I haven’t had many problems with creating and using an address this way.

When you sign up on a web page you should begin using this method if it’s a job search site, forum you read, or any other types of information you want to track from this source,  you can even use this email address on your resume.

Using this method you can create a number of email addresses and filters to help you sort out messages you receive during and even after your job search when you’ve landed and are working again.

I have an email address printed on my network/business card with the plus (+) address format so I can track where my information is being seen and used or passed around.  It’s another way to know if you’re marketing yourself well because you can ask someone where they saw or got that particular plus (+) email address from that they contacted you with.

The following are the steps to take to create a filter in Gmail and I’ve included screen shots to help you follow along as well:

• When logged into Gmail there will  be a “create a filter” link on the main page after the search options as shown below:

• Click on “Create a filter” as shown above and the following screen will appear:

• It will ask you to choose the search criteria, and as noted above, you would put the “new” email address in the To: field, which will be in the format of yourgmailaddress+somefilter@gmail.com, in the example given in the screenshot your gmail address would normally be testaccount@gmail.com and you would create a word to put after the plus sign and before the @ (at) sign to use on, and in the example above you are looking to filter emails from LinkedIn, so the full email address would be testaccount+linkedin@gmail.com.
• After entering the email address you are going to be using, you would then click “next step”, and the following screen will appear:

• First you would select apply the label, and in the drop-down that is next to it, either use an existing label you’ve created, or create one to handle these newly filtered messages
• The next two steps are not entirely necessary, but I’ve found if I’m looking for an email to this email address and want to see it immediately, I send it to another email address that doesn’t get a lot of messages (for example a blackberry address) and because you want to save these messages, check the “Never send it to spam”
• Lastly, click on “Create Filter” and the filter will be created for you.

To make it easier to follow, I have created a two page PDF document with the above instructions you can print out and follow along with that is available for download at the following link:  Using Gmail Email Filters to Assist in Your Job Search.pdf

If you have any tips on using email filtering, how and why you use it, on Gmail or some other platform (webmail or an email program on your computer) please share them in the comments below.