What Contact Details Belong on a Resume
Last updated 2026-09-10
The contact block is the highest-stakes, lowest-effort part of the resume: a mistake here can make an otherwise strong application unreachable, and nothing else on the page can compensate.
Include
- Full name, as it appears on your identification.
- A professional email address — firstname.lastname is the safe form.
- Phone number with country code if applying internationally.
- City and country. A full street address is unnecessary and mildly risky.
- LinkedIn URL, in readable form rather than hidden behind a hyperlink.
- A portfolio, GitHub or personal site where relevant to the role.
Never include
- A photograph, in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland or Australia. It is widely advised against, since it can introduce grounds for a discrimination claim. Norms differ in parts of Europe and Asia — follow local convention.
- Date of birth, age, marital status, gender, nationality or religion, unless legally required in your jurisdiction.
- Your full home address.
- Multiple phone numbers or email addresses. Pick one of each.
- Your current work email — it signals poor judgment and may not survive your departure.
The placement mistake that matters
Never put contact details in the document header or footer region. A meaningful number of parsers skip those regions entirely, which means a technically perfect resume arrives with no way to contact you. Keep the contact block in the main body, at the top.
Frequently asked questions
- Should I include my full address?
- No. City and country satisfy every location filter without publishing your home address to an unknown number of recipients.
- What if I am relocating?
- Put the target city with a note: "Relocating to Berlin, September 2026". This prevents you being filtered out on your current location.
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