As is usually the case, the answer is that it depends. In this case the answer also is that usually it doesn't matter very much. Dear Bob …Recently, a friend of mine said that, when job-hunting, she didn’t want to use a Gmail account because she was concerned about how potential employers would view it.I was rather surprised. I wouldn’t think hiring managers and so on would care, so long as it wasn’t an address like hot_steamy_blonde@gmail.com or anything like that. Have you heard of any employers frowning on applications from Gmail or Yahoo Mail or the like?– InnocuousDear Innocuous … I think your friend is thinking about the right subject but hasn’t arrived at the right answer.The subject is personal branding – how you want a hiring manager to think about you. As professional markets know, even small inconsistencies can damage a brand, so it’s worth thinking about every element of the material you make visible to a prospective employer.My opinion about a Gmail address specifically is that while many employers discourage or forbid its use for corporate e-mail, no reasonable hiring manager would think twice about which consumer e-mail service an applicant subscribes to for personal use. That’s for hiring in general. For a technical IT position, I would say that an AOL address probably conveys the wrong image — AOL’s core customers are non-technical consumers. Speaking unscientifically, I’d think that of the major services, the order would look like this, from least desirable to best image-enhancer:1. AOL2. Hotmail 3. Yahoo mail and Gmail (tie)4. Local broadband ISPs5. Personal/family e-mail domain. If you were looking to hire a deep-in-the-wires netadmin, I think you’d agree the e-mail address firstname@lastname.com would make a good if subliminal impression. Likewise, someone with that e-mail address who applied for a warehouse management job might seem just a bit off the mark.– Bob Technology Industry