By | Regina Borsellino | www.themuse.com
When you’re listing your contact information in the header of your resume, you may assume your street address is part of that. And for a long time you would’ve been right. But in our increasingly online world—when’s the last time a job you applied to sent you snail mail?—you might wonder if you still need to put your full street address on a resume. The short answer: No.
However, it’s still a good idea to list your location on a resume, meaning your city, state, and zip code or the metropolitan area where you live (i.e. New York Metropolitan Area).
Read on to find out why and how exactly to list your location—plus, what to do if you’re applying to a job in an area where you don’t currently live.
“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, there’s little reason companies need to know your full address before hiring you. Even if it’s a job that requires a background check (for which a full address would be necessary), that will be done later in the hiring process, long after the step where you’d submit a resume.
There are a few reasons to leave your full address off a resume:
- You might look behind-the-times: Much like the phrase, “References available upon request,” adding a full address could look outdated, says Muse career coach Barb Girson, and may make the person reading the resume (often subconsciously) feel like you haven’t looked for a job in a while or aren’t keeping up with current trends. You might be particularly concerned about giving this impression if you’re an older job seeker, but you’ll want to show you’ve done your research no matter what your age.
Click here to read the full article
