Should I put my address on my resume?

What to include instead of a full address

The location line on your resume has one job: to tell the employer whether you are in a workable time zone or geography for the role. A city and country does that. A street number and postcode does not add anything useful and hands out information you cannot take back.

Use this format as your default: City, Country. For example: Austin, United States or Manchester, United Kingdom or Melbourne, Australia or Toronto, Canada. If you are applying within the same country as the employer, dropping the country and keeping the city and state or province is also fine: Austin, TX or Toronto, ON.

• Austin, TX, United States (for international applications from the US)
• London, United Kingdom
• Sydney, NSW, Australia
• Vancouver, BC, Canada
• Remote, United States (if you work fully remotely and want to signal flexibility)

Why a full address can hurt you

Applicant tracking systems parse your resume into fields. A full address sometimes breaks that parsing, splitting your street name into the wrong field and corrupting your record before a human ever reads it.

There is also a proximity bias risk. Some recruiters, consciously or not, filter out candidates who live far from the office even when the role is hybrid or remote. Listing only your city gives you control over that conversation. You can address commute or relocation in a cover letter or at the interview stage, on your terms.

Finally, your resume circulates. It may be forwarded to third-party recruiters, stored in databases, or screenshotted. A home address attached to your name and employment history is a meaningful piece of personal data. There is no professional reason to share it at the application stage.

When to add more location detail

There are a few situations where you should give a slightly fuller picture.

• Relocating soon: write your current city, then add 'Relocating to [City] in [Month Year]' so the employer knows you will be local.
• Applying to a role that requires on-site presence: confirm your city clearly so there is no ambiguity about your ability to commute.
• Applying from outside the country: include your country and, if you have the right to work there already, add a short note such as 'Open to relocation, eligible to work in the UK' near your contact details.
• Government or regulated roles: some public sector applications in the US, Canada, and Australia still ask for a full address in their forms. Fill it in on the form, but keep your resume to city and country.

Where to put your location on the resume

Place your location in the contact block at the top of the first page, on the same line as or directly below your name. Keep it next to your phone number, email address, and LinkedIn URL. Do not bury it in a summary paragraph or leave it out entirely, because some ATS systems flag resumes with no location data.

A clean contact block looks like this:

Jordan Lee | Austin, TX | jordan.lee@email.com | +1 512 000 0000 | linkedin.com/in/jordanlee

That single line gives a recruiter everything they need to reach you and place you geographically. Nothing more is required.

Remote roles and location lines

If you are targeting fully remote roles, you have two reasonable options. You can list your actual city so the employer can verify time zone fit, which is the more transparent choice. Or you can write 'Remote, United States' or 'Remote, Canada' to signal that you work remotely and are based in that country.

Avoid writing 'Remote' with no country. Many remote roles are restricted by country for tax, payroll, or legal reasons. Leaving out your country forces the recruiter to ask, which slows things down. Give them the country at minimum.

If a job posting says 'US only' or 'must be based in the UK', make sure your location line matches that requirement clearly. Ambiguity here leads to automatic rejection by the ATS before a person sees your resume.

How Break-In Bad handles location when building your resume

When Omar builds or enhances your resume, she checks every job posting for location requirements, including whether it is on-site, hybrid, or remote, and whether it restricts applicants by country or visa status. She then makes sure your resume contact block reflects the right level of location detail for each application.

Because Break-In Bad writes a tailored resume per job rather than one generic document, your location line can be adjusted for each role without you having to track it manually. If a posting requires US-based candidates and you are in Austin, your resume will say so clearly. If a role is fully remote and open internationally, the location line will reflect that instead.