What to Put in Your Resume Contact Information (and What to Leave Off)

Your resume contact information should include four things: your full name, one phone number, a professional email address, and your city and state (or city and country). Everything else is optional and situational. You no longer need a full street address, and you should never add a photo, date of birth, or personal details that give recruiters a reason to screen you out before they read a single bullet point.

The contact block is the first thing a recruiter and an applicant tracking system (ATS) both read, so it has to be correct, easy to parse, and free of anything that could get your application misrouted or auto-rejected. This guide walks through exactly what to include, what to cut, and how to format it so it survives both human and automated review.

The four essentials every resume header needs

Start with the non-negotiables. These four items appear on virtually every resume that gets a callback, and leaving one out is a common reason applications stall.

• Full name. Use the name you go by professionally, in a slightly larger font than the body text so it reads as the title of the document. If you use a preferred name, put it here; you can note a legal name later if a background check requires it.
• One phone number. List a single number you actually answer, usually your mobile. Recruiters will not try three numbers to reach you, and a second line just adds clutter and parsing risk.
• A professional email address. Use a clean format built from your name, such as firstname.lastname or a close variant. Retire anything from a nickname era or an old provider that dates you. Keep the address you use for the job search separate from the one flooded with newsletters so you never miss a reply.
• Location. City and state (or city and country) is enough. It tells employers whether you are local, in the right time zone, or a relocation candidate, without exposing your exact address.

What to leave off your contact information

Just as important as what you add is what you cut. Several old conventions actively hurt you now, either because they create privacy and bias risk or because they confuse the ATS.

• Full street address. A precise address is a privacy and security exposure and can trigger geographic bias ("too far to commute"). City and state cover everything an employer legitimately needs at the application stage.
• Photo, date of birth, age, marital status, and nationality. In the United States and many other markets these invite discrimination and give screeners protected-class information they are not supposed to consider. Photos can also break ATS parsing. Leave them off unless you are applying in a country or industry where a photo is a genuine local standard.
• Multiple phone numbers or emails. Redundant contact points add nothing and can split a recruiter's attention or trip up automated field mapping.
• Unnecessary personal links. Only include profiles that strengthen your case for this role. A dormant Twitter/X handle or a personal blog unrelated to your field is noise.

Optional links that actually help

A few optional items are worth adding when they support your candidacy. The test is simple: would a recruiter click it, and would it help you? If not, cut it.

• LinkedIn URL. Include it if your profile is current and consistent with your resume. Customize the URL in your settings so it reads as linkedin.com/in/yourname rather than the default string of random characters. A polished, active profile reinforces you; a neglected one can quietly work against you, so update it before you link it. If you want to make sure recruiters can actually find that profile, see our guide on optimizing your LinkedIn profile for AI recruiter search.
• Portfolio or personal site. Designers, developers, writers, marketers, and other people whose work is visual or sample-driven should link a portfolio. Make sure it loads, is up to date, and is not password-protected.
• GitHub or other work-sample links. For engineering and data roles, a GitHub or relevant repository link can carry real weight. For most other roles it is unnecessary.

Format the header so an ATS can read it

How you place the contact block matters as much as what it contains. Applicant tracking systems parse text into fields, and a header buried in the wrong part of the file can get lost.

• Keep it in the main body of the page, at the very top. Do not put contact details inside a header or footer region of the document. Many ATS parsers ignore true header/footer content, which means your phone number and email can vanish from the recruiter's system even though they are visible to a human.
• Use plain text, not images or icons as the only label. A phone icon is fine as decoration, but the actual number must be selectable text. If your email is an image, the ATS cannot read it.
• Separate items cleanly. A single line or two lines with pipes, dots, or spacing between items keeps the block scannable and parseable. Avoid tables and text boxes for the contact section, since those are common sources of parsing errors.
• Match the name on your other materials. Use the same name and email across your resume, cover letter, and application form so nothing looks mismatched or gets filed under two identities.

These formatting habits are part of the same discipline that keeps your whole resume machine-readable. If you want the full picture on what parses cleanly and what quietly gets you rejected, read our guide on the ATS-friendly resume format.

Do you need a professional title under your name?

A short professional title placed directly under your name is optional, but it can sharpen how quickly a recruiter understands who you are. It is not part of your contact details in the strict sense, yet it lives in the same header block, so it is worth a deliberate decision.

• Use a title that matches the role you are applying for. If the posting is for a "Senior Financial Analyst" and that is a fair reflection of your experience, mirroring that language helps both the human reader and the keyword matching that many systems run. Avoid inflating a title beyond what your history supports.
• Keep it to one line. A title is a signpost, not a summary. Save the detail for your resume summary a few lines down.
• Skip it if it adds confusion. Career changers and new graduates sometimes have no single title that fits. In that case, leave it out and let your summary and skills do the framing instead.

Because a title is one of the few header elements you should adjust per application, treat it the way you treat the rest of the document. The same logic behind tailoring your resume to the job description applies here: a small, honest adjustment to match the target role beats a generic label.

Special situations: remote roles, relocation, and international applications

A few scenarios call for judgment beyond the defaults.

• Applying to remote jobs. Still list your city and state, because employers often care about time zone, legal work authorization by region, and occasional on-site needs. If a listing is remote but region-restricted, your location signals whether you qualify.
• Relocating. You can list your target city if you are committed to moving, or add a short note such as "Relocating to [city]" so you are not filtered out as a distant candidate. Be honest, because a mismatch surfaces quickly.
• Applying internationally. Contact-block norms vary. Some countries expect a photo, date of birth, or nationality; others prohibit exactly those. Research the local standard for the country and industry before you deviate from the U.S. defaults above.

Once the contact block is clean, the rest of the document has to work as hard as the header does. Tighten your resume summary next, and make sure your bullet points show real impact so the recruiter who reaches you has a reason to keep reading.