5 things you should always have on your résumé and 8 items to leave out

Job seekers should leave out their photo and references on their résumé, experts told B-17.

Part of looking for a job is sending your résumé out over and over again. But beware: What you include and leave out and how your résumé looks could shape your chances of getting hired.

“Recruiters and talent-acquisition people are going through résumés very, very quickly,” Stacie Haller, the chief career advisor with ResumeBuilder.com, said. “They’re getting totally inundated now. So the way your résumé is formatted and the way you put yourself out there is even more critical today to get an interview.”

Vicki Salemi, career expert for career site Monster, said job seekers only have a few seconds to “catch the recruiter’s attention.” With that in mind, job seekers may want to leave out certain things on their résumé that potential employers don’t really care about.

There’s also particular information that needs to be on your résumé, such as key skills and quantifying your work duties. Even how you include your contact information can be crucial on a résumé.

“Your résumé has become far more important to get through that front door than it ever has before,” Maggie Norton, the owner and founder of RepattEARN, a leadership and career skills development company, said. “And it’s because we’ve removed that humanistic touchpoint, and we’ve gone to a completely digital world.”

Haller, Norton, and Salemi talked to B-17 about what you should never and always include on your résumé.

Always be specific and have the minimum requirements for a job on your résumé

Norton said people shouldn’t word information vaguely and need to include numbers. For instance, your résumé should include how long you were in a role, the actual title of the role, and what you specifically did.

Norton suggested looking at the minimum requirements for the job you’re submitting a résumé for “and make sure that they’re so plainly listed on your résumé” because this would make it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to clearly see the job seeker has the particular skills and programs needed. Norton said to include the skills, programs, and platforms in a bulleted list section instead of simply including these within the job descriptions on your résumé.

Salemi said to include education and relevant certifications. Similar to Norton, Salemi said to quantify your skills and experience on your résumé.

“Let’s say you manage a team. How many people are on the team? You manage a budget; what’s the amount? You save the company money? How much do you save them? And you want to shine a spotlight on that,” Salemi said.

Always include how long you held a job

Salemi said she has seen résumés that include just the year, which is fine. Still, she said it’s usually good to have the month and year written down for each job.

Always have a way for hiring managers and recruiters to contact you

Norton said job seekers should always have a contact line that notes the city and state they want to be working in, a complete phone number, and an email. Norton said the email address should sound professional. She added this contact information should also “have the word LinkedIn that is hyperlinked to your profile” and should be the résumé’s second line.

While some people may not want to include their phone number, Norton said it’s a good idea to have it instead of just your email address because an email from a recruiter or hiring manager could unintentionally get lost in a job seeker’s spam folder.

Make sure to include keywords

Salemi said job seekers need to include specific keywords in their résumé for the job they’re applying for.

“Tailor your résumé to each job you’re pursuing,” Salemi said. “It’s not time-consuming. It will require effort, but it’s not going to take you hours.”

She gave the example of pursuing a recruiting position. If the job description keeps bringing up “talent acquisition” instead of recruiter or human resources, then talent acquisition is a keyword that should be on your résumé at least one time — if you have that experience.

Make sure to have the key information at the top

Haller said the top of the résumé should clearly note the role a job seeker is applying to, along with a few other key details.

“It needs to be a crafted statement of the position you’re applying for, just a sentence or two typically, with a couple of things captured in there about why it has to relate to what they’re looking for,” Haller said.

She gave the example of a job seeker with years of experience with the accounting software QuickBooks and experience working in a small office who is hoping to get an accountant role. She said she would put at the top in bold text the word “accountant” and then say how many years of “small office experience with extensive knowledge of QuickBooks.”

She finds this is important because “immediately the person looking at it has a reason to look at your résumé, and they know what job you’re looking for. And then you got to carefully craft the rest of your résumé with quantifiers with some context.”

Similarly, Norton said résumés always need to include a professional summary, which should look toward the future. She gave the example of a senior manager looking to move up to a vice president position in their next job.

Never include certain personal details

Salemi said to be aware of the risk of identity theft and to leave out your birthday and Social Security number. Indeed, she noted job applications that ask for personally identifying information like this could be a scam.

There are other personal details you don’t need a hiring manager to review on your résumé. Salemi said to leave out your marital status, religion, political affiliation, age, height, and weight.

Additionally, Salemi said job seekers don’t need to include hobbies that aren’t relevant for the job they’re looking for.

“Sometimes it is good to include hobbies and volunteer experiences because it shows that you’re a well-rounded person,” Salemi said. “You may connect with the interviewer on that level, and they may think, ‘Oh wow, they have a life outside of work.'”

Don’t include a picture

Norton, Salemi, and Haller all suggested leaving out a photo. Haller said a picture could lead to discrimination in the job search process.

Plus, recruiters and hiring managers can probably find any public pictures of you if they really want to.

“An employer can look you up on social media and see your photo associated with your social handles,” Salemi said.

Don’t include your nicknames

Norton said to never include a nickname on your résumé.

“I’ve seen some really unprofessional ones that have stopped me and other managers in our tracks where we didn’t even read the rest of the résumé,” she said, adding “I would see someone that had their first and last name and then in the middle they would have quotes and their nickname. If that is inappropriate, it’s going to be a no-go.”

But not everyone uses their formal name in daily life. Norton said the choice is up to the applicant but suggested people not use their nickname if they don’t mind their formal name. She likes using formal names because it is a “powerful nonverbal communication message of professionalism.”

Don’t include where you live

Your street address probably doesn’t need to be included on your résumé either. Haller is also in favor of no ZIP code, despite finding “a ton of résumé writing services out there that are putting the city, state, and the ZIP code,” because she finds where a job seeker actually resides irrelevant.

“We eliminated street addresses years ago, really for a couple of reasons,” Haller said. “One, nobody’s mailing you anything anymore. What is the purpose of a street address on your résumé? And the other reason we took it off is it’s discriminatory.”

Don’t make the résumé unreadable and unprofessional

Norton said she would move on if a résumé was in “unprofessional formatting.” That would include typos and the format being “off.”

“You can tell a well-crafted datasheet from an unprofessional-looking document, but people have to remember your résumé is a reflection of your professionalism, and the formatting counts,” Norton said. “It’s not supposed to be pretty. It’s supposed to be a datasheet for success.”

She said recruiters and hiring managers go through a checklist of key pieces of information, from the name to any education requirements, so clearly listing those details in an easy to scan format is important.

Haller said it’s important to have your résumé in a format where people can quickly find what they’re looking for because a job seeker has a few seconds to grab someone’s attention.

“You need to highlight quickly why they should speak with you, what is important about you, and are you right for the job,” Haller said.

Don’t include your pay history

While the employer will likely want to see what position titles you have had to determine your experience and qualifications for the role they’re hiring for, Salemi said to leave out your current and past salary.

Don’t include a line about references

Haller said people include on their résumé “references available upon requests.” However, she added, “We don’t do that anymore either because it’s just a given.”

While Salemi said that line may be OK to include, you don’t need to include the contact information of potential references because it “takes up valuable space.”

Don’t include jargon words

When highlighting what you do for work on your résumé, it needs to make sense to recruiters and hiring managers who don’t work at your current workplace. Salemi said to remove from your résumé jargon and acronyms that others outside the company wouldn’t know.

Salemi suggested using generic terms instead because this can help the applicant tracking system, hiring managers, and recruiters.