5 Errors at the Top of Your Resume that Could be Slowing Your Job Search: Some job search issues are easy to fix!

Your resume is a marketing document designed to grab an employer’s attention, leading to that all-important job interview. It is possible—and not uncommon—for the resume to hit all the right notes, yet you do not get any interview invitations. This can happen when, despite your best efforts, employers and recruiters cannot find you. Perhaps they cannot even find your resume in their automated systems.

Hiring teams need basic information about you to load your resume into their systems, and then to contact you for the interview. We convey essential information about how to contact us at the top of a resume. This information could include:

1. Physical location,
2. Phone numbers,
3. Our email address,
4. LinkedIn profile address, and
5. Personal website address.

This information is so basic it seems unnecessary to cover it in any job search conversation. Yet, I often see errors, omissions, and even too much information on resumes.

Both jobseekers and professional resume writers spend a lot of time making certain we have the right keywords for the resume to be found, but all is for naught if your resume is lost, or the employer cannot contact you because their system does not find your contact information. Even worse, hiring teams may be unable to put you on their schedule because they cannot find your resume at all.

Your Physical Location

About 25 years ago it was unheard-of to produce a resume without including the jobseeker’s street address. How was the employer to contact you, or know that you lived in their commuting area? All this has changed.

A resume client pointed out to me one day that, by including her street address, a curious hiring manager could find a photo of her home online, among other things.

When job search and talent search went digital prospective employers and recruiters no longer needed street addresses at once. Recruiters I have spoken with recommend including only the city, state, and zip code to provide sufficient information for their applicant tracking systems.

It’s a good idea to include this information even when applying for remote jobs. Some employers want remote employees to report in-person periodically, while others may limit recruiting to certain geographic areas for tax and economic reasons.

Phone Numbers

It was common at one time to list home and office telephone numbers on resumes, but this is not needed anymore. Today, the best practice is to include your cellphone number. Make certain that voicemail works and has a professional outgoing message.

It can be counterproductive to include home and office numbers in addition to a cellphone number. Employers will not call multiple numbers. Also, someone else may answer your office or home number and inadvertently leave a poor impression with the caller.

Email Addresses

It is essential for you to have a job search email address. Get a Gmail address if you don’t already have one and use some variation of your name. You can forward your job search email address to another address if you don’t check this address regularly.

Occasionally, I receive resumes with business email addresses on them. This is not recommended for several reasons. First, you can lose access to this address. More importantly, perhaps, using an office email address suggests that you use company assets for private purposes. Your current employer can also read your office email.

LinkedIn Address

Include a LinkedIn profile address on your resume. Create a LinkedIn profile now if you do not already have one. While the primary purpose of your LinkedIn profile is to support your networking efforts and allow you to expand on the information in your resume, it will also provide another way for employers to reach you quickly.

Select a vanity LinkedIn profile address. Vanity addresses are shorter and more appropriate for resumes.

Of course, if you are employed at a company or in an industry that restricts your use of social media, abide by these restrictions.

Personal Website Addresses

If you have a personal website such as a web portfolio or web resume that is relevant for your industry or profession, you may add this address to your contact information.

The guiding concept is relevance. For example, we typically do not include hobbies on resumes, so hobby-related websites should not be included, either.

Formatting Considerations

It’s tempting to place contact information in a first-page MS-Word header. This does not work for resumes because applicant tracking systems normally do not read headers. Your contact information will be lost, along with the rest of your resume. You will be among the 75 percent of applicants that do not pass ATS screening even when you follow best practices in substantive sections of your resume.

Last, but not least, your name is one of the most important pieces of information on your resume. Put your name on top, in the largest font on your document. ATS systems could disregard your resume when your name is not in the document body. And, if you have networked your way into the company, a hiring team member may search for you by name in their system. They won’t be able to hire you in some cases and may not even be allowed to formally interview you, if you cannot be found in their ATS. So, do not hide your name in a footer, header, or in the margin.

You can ameliorate the risk that your essential information will be lost by sending your resume in PDF format. But it is still possible that the information will not be populated correctly in the employer’s database when your name, location, email address, and phone number are not right on top where automated systems expect to find them. Even modern AI-based systems may not be “smart enough” to look elsewhere.

Conclusion

Review and proofread the contact information section of your resume as carefully as every other section. You won’t get interviews if hiring teams cannot reach you quickly. And you will not know why you are not receiving calls.