As someone who is very definitely in the Generation X bunch, I would say that I've had to learn to use emojis rather than it being my natural go to when emailing.
I love a good emoji - a 'smiley’, a 'crying with laughter', even the brown one with the smile (and we all know what that one is!) but I keep these to my personal and not professional emails.
Now I hear the cries of the Millennials and Gen Zs all around me, it's part of our language now and how everyone communicates. True and as I say, they do have a place, even in the workplace between colleagues (you should see some of our mails to each other) but just not in a professional capacity.
Ben-Gurion University quoted below based on their experiments says:
"responses without smileys were more detailed and tended to include more information than those with smileys."
" participants judged senders who included emojis as being less competent than those senders who did not include emojis"
" senders using smiling photographs were perceived as more competent and friendly than those with neutral-looking photos. Unfortunately, smileys still fared poorly. Senders that included emojis were still perceived as less competent."
What does it mean for you? If you use emojis in a professional capacity you’ll appear less competent than those who do not. To be honest, you may as well go the whole hog and use Comic Sans!
So, a plea from me - don't use emojis when you are looking for a new job - but do save a "smiley" or two for when you are texting your loved ones when you have found the new job!
Think that smiley face emoji is making you seem more friendly and approachable to your prospects? Think again. A new study from Ben-Gurion University (BGU) finds the use of smileys in work-related emails might not create a positive impression and could even be undermining your reputation. While in-person smiles increase perceptions of warmth and competence, this study found smiley emojis actually decrease perceived competence.
Read the original article here