It Opens You Up For Discrimination
Though itâs illegal, discrimination still occurs at every stage of the job search process. Similar to why you should never include your photo on a resume, your address can potentially be used to draw conclusions about you and your lifestyle. These conjectures are mitigated by using simply your city, state, and zip code.
Again, this is illegal. However, some neighborhoods do come with assumptions about the people who live there. Avoid the risk by omitting your exact street address.
Elaborate Formats And Designs
When it comes to selecting a design for your resume, less is more. Not only do elaborate designs and unconventional formats confuse most applicant tracking systems, but they also annoy recruiters who are accustomed to quickly scanning a resume for specific information they expect to find in particular spots within the document. Don’t make recruiters hunt for the information they care about. Play it safe and stick to a clean resume design with a clear hierarchy. Not sure what works? Check out TopResume’s library of free resume samples.
Are There Any Advantages Of Including Your Address
As weve seen above, there are many reasons why recruiters are looking for your address on your resume. There are also many reasons why you may wish to omit your address on your resume. While all of these points remain true, there are advantages for both you and the recruiter when including your address on your resume.
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Irrelevant Social Media Accounts
Not only is this information a waste of resume space, but including personal social media accounts that arent aligned with your professional brand can derail your job search. If youre applying for a job at TikTok or Facebook, it might be acceptable to leave your social media accounts on your professional resume, otherwise remove these links from your resume and take steps to safeguard your brand.
Flesh out at least one professional profile on sites like LinkedIn, GitHub, or About.Me, depending upon your line of work, and include the link at the top of your resume. If you work in a creative field, consider creating a personal site that has a mobile-responsive design so you can share your portfolio from any device.
Helping Yourself Get Hired
When youre making decisions about what to include on your resumewhether its your address, some of the positions youve held in the past, or information that may be considered extraneousits important to keep in mind that your goal in writing your resume is to get hired.
You want to make it as easy as possible for an employer to decide to schedule an interview and, eventually, offer you the job.
Focus on highlighting your most relevant attributes for each job that you are pursuing, taking the time to match your qualifications to the position and tweaking your resume so it gets past the screening systems and noticed by recruiters.
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Why Shouldnt You Include Your Full Street Address On Your Resume
The best practice in the U.S. is to omit your full address from your resume, says Muse career coach Emily Liou, former recruiter and founder of Cultivitae. Since the job application process no longer involves sending and receiving things by mail, theres little reason companies need to know your full address before hiring you. Even if its a job that requires a background check , that will be done later in the hiring process, long after the step where youd submit a resume.
There are a few reasons to leave your full address off a resume:
There are a few exceptions where it may make sense to include your full street address on your resume. If youre applying to jobs outside of the U.S. and Canada, your full address is often a requirement, Liou says. Some federal government jobs will also require a mailing address on your resume . And for some jobsa local delivery job, a community advocate, or a school crossing guard, for exampleliving in the neighborhood might work in your favor, Girson says.
Your Location May Affect Your Candidacy
There are two main forms of bias you may encounter when including an address:
- âLocation Bias: Location bias involves discrimination based on your physical location. For instance, letâs say a job applicant who lives in Miami, FL is applying for a job in Pheonix, AZ. They may encounter location bias due to being several states away.â
- Distance Bias: Distance bias occurs when a job applicant lives in the same city or state as the business but is still not close in proximity. This typically occurs when job applicants would have to commute more than 30 minutes to their place of work.
These kinds of biases are why many applicants choose to exclude their addresses from resumes.
As an alternative to excluding the address, consider removing your street address only!
A less specific address can help you get your foot in the door and avoid location or distance bias.
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Format Option : Writing Just The City State And Zip Code
John Doe
Alternatively, you can also omit the zip code for a more generalized location, like so:
John DoeNew York, NY
Benefits of including only the city, state, and zip code: Greater privacy by not disclosing your street address. The addition of a zip code helps employers to pinpoint exactly your exact location within a city
Hiring Managers Expect To See It
As mentioned earlier, the inclusion of an address on a resume is a traditional expectation of hiring managers.
Excluding your address may not sit well with employers who are expecting to see it.
This can lead to a negative first impression â something you want to avoid at all costs!
Because many hiring managers still expect to see an address, it is often recommended to include location information in some form.
Luckily, as we covered above there are many different formatting options when it comes to listing your resume.
This allows you to choose a format that you are comfortable with while still meeting employer expectations.
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What To Include On Your Resume
What should absolutely be included on your resume? And what can you ditch?
My new client, Frank, was struggling hard with this question. He had only three years of professional work experience — and his resume was three pages long.
I had to hand it to him — the kid had spirit. Frank was an active volunteer, had won plenty of academic accolades during his college career and had taken on a lot of different job responsibilities in the three years he had been with his current company.
Did I mention that the average time a recruiter spends looking at your resume is six seconds? There’s no time for a page flip.
Here are a few fast, hard rules for what should — and shouldn’t be on your resume.
1. References available on request.
Ditch it. It’s implied that you have professional references who can speak on your behalf. No need to show up to an interview and push a hard copy into your interviewer’s hands, either. Though it’s a smart idea to have those references ready to send over.
2. Your GPA.
Only if your industry calls for it. Such as, if you’re applying for a role in investment banking or engineering. The only other time your GPA is worth including is if you’re a semi recent grad and you graduated magna cum laude — or with notable academic accolades.
3. Company descriptions.
4. Computer skills.
5. Internships
6.Your address.
7. An objective statement.
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The Resume Trick That Can Help You Get Your Foot In The Door
Given that most recruiters and major companies use applicant tracking software to sift through candidates, Thompson says that not including your location on your resume makes the ATS more likely to skip over you altogether. That doesnt mean you have to take yourself out of the running, though for applicants open to relocating, including an objective statement outlining a willingness to move, accompanied by the citys ZIP code, can make all the difference.
To make things even clearer, Thompson recommends including a specific move date to clear up any worry on the hiring managers side. And of course, put them way up at the top to grab the recruiters attention.
As she tells it, something to the tune of, moving to XYZ area effective XYZ date, is key. Specific phrases like, willing to relocate, can also help applicants get flagged by ATS software, though Thompson says it doesnt always solve the ZIP code search issue with companies or outside recruiters. For the most part, its best practice to include the ZIP code of the city youre looking to wind up in somewhere on the resume.
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Include Only The City And State
If youre worried about people tracking you down by your exact address, you can also simply leave just the city and state you live in. That way, employers know roughly how long your commute is, and whether or not youre a local candidate. If you want to be careful, you can leave your zip code, since some ATS software uses zip codes for screening applicants.
Examples
- Baltimore, MD 21202
It Looks Less Suspicious If You Include It
Since its common practice to write your address on your resume, hiring managers expect to see it.
Therefore, if you dont include your address, it immediately triggers red flags in hiring managers heads, and makes them question why you left it off. This could cause hiring managers to disregard your resume, ending the bid for your target job before it really began.
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What About On A Job Application Do I Need To Put My Real Address
Resumes give flexibility for some additional clarification but applications do not. Lying on applications is a big no in my book so on an official job app you should be putting your actual address.
If you are worried about being automatically screened out by an applicant tracking system, take matters into your own hands by networking effectively within the company.
Hope this post helped you tackle this common question! If youre currently kicking off a job search, check out our Conquer Your Job Search course here.
Missing Information Can Make Employers Cautious
Addresses are one of the traditional standard resume featuresyou won’t find a resume template that doesn’t include space for an address. So omitting yours could send off alarm bells to some conservative employers. For these hirers, your resume will seem incomplete, and they may wonder if you’re trying to hide something or just lacking attention to detail.
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Privacy Concerns And The City State Solution
Now that snail mail has no part in the application process, your street address is not necessary. Employers will need your address in the onboarding stage for tax purposes, but not before then. Thats good news for applicants with privacy or discrimination concerns.
However, we do recommend including your city and state for the reasons described above.
Heres what that looks like:
How To List References On A Resume
It’s important to have people who can vouch for your abilities and skills when applying for jobs, but offering a list of references right out of the gate is not always the best policy.
A list of references includes people a prospective employer might contact to learn more information about you. These people should be able to speak to your qualifications for a job. Sometimes an employer will contact only one person on the list, and other times an employer will contact everyone. A list of strong references can be a great way to demonstrate your qualifications for a position.
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The Reason You Left The Job
Save this information for the interview. Whether you left the job in order to advance your career, or you were terminated, explanations on paper have to be far too brief to give a future employer a favorable impression. At an interview, you are far more likely to be able to place a good spin on even an unpleasant termination.
Address On A Resume: Should You Put It And How To Write It
Your resume is ready and youre about to hit that send button. One last look and youve realized your address is missing. Oh no! Or wait do you actually need it at all?
In the age of digital communication, is there any reason why you should put your address on your resume?
In this article, well show you:
- When you should put an address on your resume.
- When its not advisable to include it in your job application.
- Examples of how to write an address on your resume.
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If you are looking for some resume examples in your field check out our awesome Resume Examples to Land Any Job.
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Job Listings Where The Listed Contact Information Is A Personal Email
Recruiters, whether they work for an agency or in-house for a specific company, usually have a work email address. They wont use a personal email for hiring purposes.
Dont include personal details on your resume when the job posters email isnt a professional work email, especially if you found the job on free ad sites like Craigslist. Sites that dont require payment for listing attract a lot of scammers, because you dont have to pay or provide a lot of information to create a posting.
You should also be careful if the job ad doesnt list a company or location on the job ad. What could they be hiding?
When An Employer Requests References
In some cases, an employer will request references in a job posting. Specifically, they might ask for a list of three professional references with telephone numbers and email addresses. Follow the instructions when you submit your references. Unless instructed to do so, do not include the list on your resume rather, create it as a separate list to send to the company.
This list should include each references name, job title, company, address, phone number, and email address. If the job listing asks you to submit a list of references but does not tell you how many you need, include three on the list. This is the typical number of references that employers want for each candidate.
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Helps With Verifying Your Identity
Employers may use your address for many purposes, including verifying your identity.
If you have a specific address attached to your name, this can help employers when running background checks.
It also helps them to keep more accurate and specific records!
This can ultimately show that you are being considerate of the employerâs needs and time!
What Else Should Go In A Resume Contact Information
Here are some more tips to keep in mind for the heading of your resume: the contact information section:
-
Ensure your LinkedIn profile is up to date if youâre adding it. When you do add the URL, make sure you shorten it. The instructions for this are here in our post on
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You donât need to include labels such as âAddressâ or âPhone.â Itâs clear to the hiring manager which is which.
In addition to not needing labels for your contact methods, you should never, ever include icons, emojis, or other images on your resume. These little pictures are included on many resume templates but do not perform well in those ATS scans we mentioned above.
To make sure your resume parses correctly, you can try out our free resume review service and learn what an employer sees.
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Tips For Avoiding 4 Common Punctuation Errors On Resumes
Today is National Punctuation Day a special day that I celebrated earlier this week by baking punctuation cupcakes for my students and colleagues at Michigan State University.
My favorite cupcakes were the ones with the semicolons on vanilla frosting.
A lot of job applicants could help themselves out if they paid better attention to punctuation. Resumes are tricky because they are so heavily formatted with indents and boldface type that some of the usual rules for punctuation can be suspended on the resume.
Below, Ive offered some advice related to the four most common punctuation errors that I see on resumes.
1. Commas: I tell students that if they would just learn to use the comma correctly, they could solve 80 percent of their punctuation problems. Apostrophes will take care of another 10 percent. The chief problem with commas on resumes is that Associated Press Style, which is used in most newsrooms, does not call for the serial comma that comes before the conjunction in a simple series. Using serial commas is a dead giveaway that the applicant is not very conversant with AP style despite the claim, elsewhere on the resume, that he or she is.
Coming Monday: Sifting news stories for career clues.