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Is it more professional to have a personalized voice-mail that says "This is so and so I am unable to come to the phone right now, please leave your name and number and I will return your call."?

Or is the default "You have called 123-456-7890" default voice-mail considered equally professional?

This is on a personal cell phone that would be used during a job search.

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Is this a phone you are expecting business calls on a regular basis? – DJClayworth Feb 5 at 4:30
@DJClayworth I updated the question to answer your question that it would primarily be for a job search. – Ryan Gates Feb 5 at 4:57

2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

I would say the shorter the message is, the better chance somebody will leave a mesage.

Your voice mail would be

This is so (your name). Please leave your name and number and I will return your call as soon as possible.

in a very nice tone.

Only a few words less than your first option. But, you save the caller several seconds. You don't have to say your number, the caller already knows that. You need to identify yourself so the caller knows he did not dial a wrong number. You need to say you'll call back as soon as posible so that he knows it won't be too long before you call back.

Consider the caller may be a hiring manager, he would have to make tens or even hundreds of phone calls. Short, clear and nice message would let him have good impression even he has not talked to you yet.

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+1 for short, clear and nice. I even go a little further to even exclude "... and I will get back to you as soon as possible." Simply because I may very well not call the person back. If I do call back, however, I will carefully and promptly respond. A good tool to use is google voice because it transcribes the voicemail (or lets you play it back). This is a super helpful way to organize/deal-with voicemails. – Angelo Feb 5 at 20:25
@Angelo I did think about that as soon as possible part. Excluding it could make the message too short to be nice enough. Using the tools is a good suggestion. But, it's not in the scope of this question. – scaaahu Feb 6 at 2:21
up vote -2 down vote

As you're going to be using this as a job search phone, it may as well be considered a business phone. You should update it with a more personalized message than the default automated one.

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comments removed - Please be nice, and you'll likely get better feedback from the community if you just ask. To improve your answer, please back up your answer with an edit to provide references or sharing experiences. For instance, why is it better to use a personalized message? Is there information that demonstrates this? Perhaps you work for a staffing agency who routinely ignores people who don't have personalized messages? Whatever the case, back up your answer by sharing this information. Good luck! :) – jmort253♦ Feb 9 at 4:21

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