3 Reasons to Stop Including Your Address on a Resume

Whether it’s listing your graduation year or disclosing your previous salary, providing your full-address on a resume is commonly overlooked as a detail required by employers when considering you for an interview.

It wasn’t until I made the move to New York City that I started to question whether or not it was necessary to include my address on a resume. I was sending out dozens of job applications each week when I started to question why I would provide someone with my full-address, the place where I sleep at night when they haven’t even bothered to email me back to let me know they are considering my application in the first place.

If I’m applying for a job that doesn’t specifically disclose that it’s a work from home opportunity, it should be assumed that regardless of where I live, I’ll be at work on time every day. I just couldn’t look past the idea of giving someone my address, before even getting an offer letter, let alone an interview.

It just didn’t make any kind of sense to me. So I stopped providing my address on my resume and you know what? No-one ever mentioned it to me. No-one has ever asked my address before considering my application.

When I started career coaching, I started to learn about even more reasons you should avoid disclosing your full-address on a resume. 

If you’re uploading a resume to an online portal, your address may become public knowledge

The first reason you should consider removing your address from your resume is if you use online job boards to apply for jobs.

After you upload your resume and apply for a gig on a job board, some websites will give you the option of allowing recruiters to search your resume. This isn’t always clear in the website terms and oftentimes what happens in your resume is public domain, meaning anyone on the internet can see it.

Sharing your address on your resume allows potential unconscious bias to affect your chances of even getting your foot in the door for an interview

The real reason that should deter candidates from providing their full-address on a resume is to combat unconscious bias. When you provide your full-address on a resume, no matter how hard a hiring manager can try to avoid it, assumptions can and will be made.

Think about it this way, if you’re a potential candidate to a job that will be a 45-minute commute from your home and the hiring manager had negative experiences with employees that lived equally as far in the past, this may deter them from considering your application, to begin with.

Each state, city, and town is so different that it’s important to consider the culture around commuting. In California, I lived on the Westside of Los Angeles. On my resume, I listed Los Angeles, CA as my address. Why? Because I knew how far I was willing to commute for a job and only applied to those that fell within reason. 

This helped me gain interviews at companies I was extremely passionate about, regardless of how far they were from home.

You’re a freelancer or work from home

If you’re a freelancer or work from home, this could be another reason why it’s a good decision to remove your address from your resume.

For starters, you may want your resume to be publicly available on your website. There’s absolutely no need to include your full-address in a publicly accessible document.

Another reason why you may want to consider removing your address is the fact that your rates don’t necessarily need to be adjusted based on where you live. I’m from Long Island and lived in NYC and Los Angeles before moving to Boulder a few months ago.

My rates have only gone up over the years and will not be lowered just because the cost of living is cheaper here in Boulder. As a business owner, I decide my rates not my geographical location.

If you’re working from home, listing the closest major city is more than sufficient so that the hiring manager knows what time zone you’ll be working in. Some stickler companies will go out of their way to calculate your cost of living to determine an appropriate salary and will adjust it down to your literal zip code.

For more advice on professional development check out my Workforce Survival Guide.