Whenever I have a (technical) person applying and they have a hotmail address as their preferred means of contact I shiver ever so slightly. Even if the actual mailbox is very sensible like name.firstname, I still shiver. The problem is that I will automatically be biased for whatever else you have to say.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with hotmail as such. It’s a mail box, you can send and receive email, access them online, use the windows live ID (and, by extension, myspace), … . So really, there isn’t much wrong with it in terms of very basic email service.
However, as a techie I expect you to expect more than just those basics. I somehow assume that you understand the need for, at least, powerful search in your mailbox. Next to features, there’s also the up-to-date factor of a hotmail address. Let’s face it, hotmail has been around virtually as long as the internet and at some point we all have had at least one account there. Using that, presumably, old address does not tell me that you try to keep up with what’s new. Right now, the consensus seems to be that gmail is the way to go. Either that, or your own domain. Be aware though, if you have your own domain I will go check it out so please make sure that the content on there is something you are not afraid of sharing.
That’s as far as today’s standards go. Hotmail (or planetinternet, AOL, … ) is a total no go. It has clueless wimp written all over it. Yahoo is less bad but it doesn’t really fill me with confidence that you still use it. Gmail is totally okay and you get bonus points if it’s something like firstname.lastname.jobhunting because it tells me you’re organized (I would expect you to consolidate everything in a single firstname.lastname account behind the scenes though). Using your own domain is great but be careful of the content of that domain.
In the near future I think Gmail will still rule for several years to come. I do however expect that, when the job market gets flooded with internet natives, things like facebook and/or linkedin addresses (assuming they will create something like that) might start popping up on a CV. And that will change the game of how we communicate and recruit today. A challenge for sure!