What contact information should be on a resume?

CareerOneStop recommends a name, city and state, personal email, phone number, and an optional maintained LinkedIn or portfolio link. Penn Career Services gives similar guidance and says a full street address is not needed. For a typical U.S. private-sector resume, that is a strong starting point rather than a universal application rule.

The example uses reserved or fictional details. Replace every field with information you control; do not copy the phone number, email address, or link into a real application.

CareerOneStop and Penn both state that a full street address is not needed on a resume. City and state can communicate your general location while avoiding the unnecessary publication of a home address in documents that may be uploaded, forwarded, downloaded, or stored by multiple systems.

Do not claim a local address you do not have. If relocation or remote-work eligibility matters, state the accurate fact briefly. If an application form or job announcement explicitly requires an address, provide it through the requested field or document after checking the instruction.

A personal email keeps job-search messages separate from a current employer and remains available if employment changes. Use a clear display name, review the signature, and check spam folders while applications are active. A neutral address based on your name is a practical choice, but the test is reliability and professionalism rather than a particular provider.

For the phone number, confirm the country or area code is clear for the target employer, voicemail is set up, and the mailbox is not full. Never publish another person's number without permission.

CareerOneStop recommends LinkedIn when the profile is complete and maintained. Penn notes that a GitHub or personal website may also be useful in industries where projects or a portfolio provide relevant evidence. None of these links belongs by default if it is empty, outdated, unrelated, or unsafe to share.

• +Open every link from the exported PDF or DOCX, not only from the editing application.
• +Remove tracking parameters and use a short, readable profile or portfolio URL when the service supports one.
• +Confirm that the destination works in a private browser window without a login, local network, or permission request.
• +Make the visible link text understandable; do not rely on an icon or QR code as the only destination.
• +Review the profile headline, dates, job titles, and public activity for accuracy and consistency with the resume.
• +Remove secrets, private records, confidential work, and material you do not have permission to publish.

If you need help choosing work to share, use the resume projects guide to label the context and your contribution without exposing confidential material.

A resume will often pass through an application platform, recruiter inbox, hiring team, and document store. Include what the application needs, but do not turn the resume into an identity record. USAJOBS explicitly instructs federal applicants to omit an SSN, photos, classified or sensitive government information, and personal details such as age, sex, and religious affiliation.

• -Social Security numbers, tax identifiers, passport numbers, driver's license numbers, or other government identification numbers.
• -Age, date of birth, sex, religious affiliation, marital or family information, and other personal details unrelated to the application.
• -A photo of yourself for a U.S. federal application; USAJOBS explicitly tells applicants to omit photos.
• -Classified, government-sensitive, employer-confidential, client-confidential, or personally identifying information about someone else.
• -Passwords, access tokens, private file-sharing links, internal system addresses, or links that expose nonpublic work.

This is resume-writing guidance, not a complete rule for every country, occupation, clearance process, or application. Follow the employer's legitimate instructions and use the official application channel when additional identity or eligibility information is required.

USAJOBS says most federal applications require a full name, email address, and phone number at the top, while also directing candidates to the announcement for all required contact information. Federal work-history and document requirements can differ from a private-sector resume.

Use the USAJOBS resume builder or current help guidance as a check, keep the resume within the current two-page limit unless the announcement identifies an exception, and never add an SSN or sensitive government information to the resume. The live announcement controls the application.

CareerOneStop warns that some ATS products may not read important text placed in a document header or footer. Put the contact block near the top of the resume body. Use selectable text rather than making an icon, image, or QR code the only way to identify or reach you.

A compact line with separators can work when it wraps cleanly on small screens and exported pages. Test the document using the ATS-friendly resume format guide and confirm that copied or extracted text preserves every field in a sensible order.

• +Your name, phone, email, and location are current and free of typing errors.
• +The email inbox and phone voicemail can receive an employer's message.
• +Contact details appear as ordinary selectable text near the top of the document, not only inside a header, footer, image, icon, or text box.
• +Every optional link is relevant, public, current, safe to share, and still useful if the reviewer never opens it.
• +The resume contains no SSN, government ID number, unnecessary full address, photo, confidential information, or fabricated profile.
• +The exported file preserves readable spacing, line breaks, link targets, and the correct contact details.
• +Any application-specific instructions have been checked separately and take priority over this general guide.

Put the reviewed contact block into the free ATS resume template, then use the resume sections guide to choose what follows, and use the resume photo guide before adding any portrait, avatar, or image-only profile link. If you are building your first document, continue with the no-experience resume guide.