4 Things You Should Leave Off Your Resume

As a career coach, one of the heavy hitting items I work on with job seekers is their resume. I’ve had a few conversations lately with people asking for casual feedback on their resume and well, and have noticed a few trends. I thought I’d put together a list of some of the easy things you can remove from your resume to reduce clutter, protect your privacy, and free up space for more important information.

1. Your home address (and any other personally identifiable info)

   Despite how prevalent technology breaches are, and how hard I see people working to protect their personal information online, resumes oddly remain a place where people will include all kinds of personal information that isn’t necessary for a recruiter to consider you for a role. From birthdays to home addresses, I’ve even seen people list the last four digits of their social security number on their resume. I cannot stress this enough—none of this is necessary for a recruiter to screen you! When you submit a resume to a position or host it on a site like Indeed or Monster, you’re opening yourself up to all kinds of privacy concerns if a bad actor gets access to that database. The only personally identifiable information a recruiter or hiring manager typically needs is your email (I recommend setting up a separate one for your job search) and your phone number (again, you can set up something like a Google Voice number to make sure you know when job inquiries are coming to your phone and protect your privacy as well) so that they can contact you to discuss the role. If you’d prefer to disclose your location, do it by city (Dallas, TX) or region (DFW Metroplex), instead of listing your specific home address. You won’t need to provide that unless you’re completing something like a background check or your new hire paperwork if you land the role.

2. Experience from more than 10 years ago

   A best practice is not to include experience from more than 10+ years ago on your resume. This is for several reasons, the first of which is that you don’t need anyone discriminating against you on the basis of age. If you go way back to the 1980s on your experience, they may assume you’re an old dog who can’t learn new tricks. Additionally, technology is accelerating at a rapid pace which means that systems, processes, and tools used more than 10 years ago may no longer be relevant. That’s not to say other important skills are irrelevant, but there are most often are better ways to position/sell those than to go way back in the day on your resume. Unless something is specifically relevant (industry, previous time worked at a company you’re applying to), it’s best to leave it off.

3. Previous salary info

   This is another one I occasionally see that should never be included. I realize that some companies ask for your salary history when you apply for jobs, but as a candidate, you should know that legislation is quickly sweeping the nation to ban this practice, and for good reason. Your previous salary history often sets you up for discrimination in the hiring process, leading you to take less money than a company could/should be offering you. 19 states currently have bans in place for this practice, and hopefully the remaining states will follow suit soon. If you’re really ambitious, refuse to provide that information if it’s requested and use it as an opportunity to educate the company you’re applying to (I did this in one of my last full-time roles).

4. References

   Again, this is one I find fairly shocking that people are including on their resumes. As someone who has served as a reference myself, I really would prefer for my personal contact information not to be included on a document shared and posted around as carelessly as resumes (remember, people often post these on their LinkedIn profiles, while are public!). A recruiter and hiring manager will never need these until you make it through the final stages of an interview, and they will often have a specific form for you to fill out in order to provide them. As a brief follow-up on best practices for references, always make sure you’re contacting your references to ask for their approval to list you as a reference when you start your job search. You should also give them a heads up if they should be expecting a call from a specific employer for a role you’re interviewing for. You should provide them a copy of the job description in advance, so they can reference that while speaking to your previous experience and future potential. It’s no fun being surprised that someone listed you as a reference without your knowledge or permission!

Hopefully this list helps you update your resume and keep it clean, concise, and only with the information recruiters and hiring managers truly need in order to consider you for a position. If you’re a recruiter or HR professional, what else would you add to this list? Drop a comment below with your advice!

———-

If you found this content useful and would like to see more, consider buying me a coffee to help support my small business!