Should I Put My Address on My Resume?
Skip the full street address. List city and state only. See why employers don't need more, how ATS location filters actually work, and what remote candidates should list.
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No. List your city and state only, never your full street address. Employers use location to gauge commute range, time zone, and work eligibility, and "Austin, TX" answers all three. A street address adds identity-theft risk and invites commute-based screening without improving your odds at all. Save the full address for official forms that explicitly ask for it, like a background check.
Why city and state is all you should list
The full mailing address on a resume is a leftover from the era when companies mailed you a rejection letter. Nobody is mailing you anything now. Recruiters contact you by email, phone, or LinkedIn, and every one of those already sits in your header.
What a recruiter actually needs from your location is coarse. Are you in commuting range of the office, or willing to be? Are you in a time zone the team can work with? Are you in a country or state where the company can legally employ you? City and state settles all of it. Your street name and apartment number settle nothing.
Worse, a precise address can quietly work against you. A hiring manager who sees you live 90 minutes from the office may screen you out over an assumed commute you were happy to make, or planned to shorten by moving. City and state gives them the signal without handing them a reason.
What employers actually ask for: the job description evidence
Roleframe's tailoring engine reads real job descriptions every day to match resumes against them, and the pattern is consistent across industries and seniority levels. When a posting cares about location, it says so at the city, metro, or policy level. It names an office city, sets a hybrid schedule, restricts remote hiring to certain states or countries, or requires overlap with a time zone. What postings do not do is ask for your street address. That request shows up on application forms and background checks, after an employer is already interested, never as a resume requirement.
That is the practical rule hiding in the data. Match the granularity the employer uses. They think in cities and regions, so your resume should speak in cities and regions.
Remote jobs: what location should you list?
List your real city and state, even for a fully remote role. "Remote" is not a location, and writing it in your header removes information the employer needs. Most remote postings are remote within limits. A US company hiring "Remote (US)" still has to run payroll and taxes in your state, and plenty of remote teams require overlap with Eastern or Pacific hours. A recruiter who can't tell whether you qualify may move on rather than ask.
The clean format is your city plus a signal that you're open to remote work, for example "Denver, CO · Open to remote". You keep the eligibility and time-zone information intact and still make your preference obvious.
What if you're relocating?
If you have a firm plan, list the target city with a date, for example "Relocating to Seattle, WA (June 2026)". Recruiters filter for local candidates, and a resume anchored to your current city can drop you out of searches for the city you're actually moving to. If the move is only a hope, keep your real location and mention willingness to relocate in your summary or cover letter instead. Claiming a city you don't live in yet, with no plan behind it, tends to unravel in the first phone screen.
| Your situation | What to put in your header |
|---|---|
| Applying locally | City, ST |
| Applying to remote roles | City, ST · Open to remote |
| Relocating with a firm plan | Relocating to City, ST (Month Year) |
| Student with a campus and home address | The one city relevant to the job, nothing more |
| Employer's application form asks for full address | Provide it on the form, keep the resume at city and state |
The privacy risk is real, not theoretical
Think about where your resume travels. You upload it to job boards, staffing agencies forward it, applicant tracking systems store it for years, and recruiters email it around internally. You have no control over any of those copies. A document that pairs your full name, home address, phone number, and complete employment history is a strong starter kit for identity fraud and targeted phishing.
Fake job postings make this worse. Scam listings exist specifically to harvest resumes, and the difference between a harvested resume with your city on it and one with your apartment number on it is the difference between a nuisance and a doorstep problem. There's also plain personal safety. You're sending this document to strangers. They don't need to know where you sleep.
How ATS systems filter by location
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) like Workday, Greenhouse, and Lever parse your header into structured fields, and location is one of them. When a recruiter searches their database, they typically filter by metro area or by radius from the office. "Chicago, IL" in your header places you inside those searches. A street address adds nothing to the match; the city is what the filter runs on.
The mistake that actually hurts people is leaving location off entirely. A resume with no parseable location can fall out of every geo-filtered search a recruiter runs, which means you're invisible for reasons that have nothing to do with your qualifications. City and state is the minimum that keeps you findable, and it's also the maximum you should share. If you want the full picture of how parsing and filtering work, our guide to making your resume ATS-friendly covers it end to end.
One more reassurance for anyone worried the missing street address looks evasive. Recruiters see city-and-state headers all day, every day. It's the current standard, and every major career platform teaches it. Nobody in a 2026 hiring pipeline flags a resume for lacking a zip code.
What a clean contact header looks like
Your header needs exactly five things, six if you have a portfolio or GitHub worth showing. Keep it to one or two lines under your name so the recruiter's eye moves to your experience fast. Where the header sits relative to everything else is part of a bigger question we cover in the best resume section order for your experience level.
- Full name (the largest text on the page)
- City, ST (no street, no zip)
- One phone number with voicemail set up
- One professional email address
- LinkedIn URL, shortened to linkedin.com/in/yourname
- Portfolio or GitHub link, only if it's current and relevant
Put together, it reads like this: Jordan Reyes · Austin, TX · (512) 555-0147 · jordan.reyes@email.com · linkedin.com/in/jordanreyes. Compare that with the old-style version that opens with two lines of street address and forces everything important lower on the page. The modern header is shorter, safer, and parses cleanly.
Setting up your contact header in Roleframe
In Roleframe, your contact header lives on your base resume, so you set it once. Enter city and state in the location field, and every tailored version you generate for a specific job carries it forward automatically. The templates keep the header in a plain, parseable format that ATS software reads without errors, and because the export is true to the editor, the PDF a recruiter opens looks exactly like what you built. Export as PDF and submit it that way; it locks your formatting in place, which is exactly what a header needs.
Frequently asked questions
Should I put my zip code on my resume?
No. City and state is enough for every location filter a recruiter runs. A zip code narrows your location to a few blocks, which adds privacy risk and opens the door to neighborhood-based assumptions without improving your match in any ATS search.
Should I put my address on my cover letter?
No. The formal business-letter block with your street address and the employer's is obsolete. Match your resume header instead: name, city and state, phone, email. It looks current and keeps both documents consistent.
Should I include my phone number and email address?
Yes, both, always. They are the two channels recruiters actually use to reach you. Use one mobile number with a working voicemail and one professional email, ideally some version of your name. Skip landlines, secondary numbers, and any email address you created in high school.
I'm a student with a campus address and a home address. Which do I use?
Use one, city and state only, and pick whichever is relevant to the job's location. If you're applying near campus, list your campus city. If you're heading home or elsewhere after graduation, list that city with a note like "Relocating May 2026". Listing two addresses clutters the header and confuses ATS parsing.
What if the online application form asks for my full address?
Provide it on the form. That data goes into the employer's own system for background checks and, later, payroll, which is a legitimate use. The distinction that matters is the document itself: your resume gets copied, forwarded, and stored in places you can't see, so it should carry city and state only.
Does leaving my address off my resume look suspicious?
No. City-and-state headers are the standard now, and recruiters read hundreds of them a week without a second thought. The version that raises questions is a resume with no location at all, because it drops you out of geo-filtered searches and makes the recruiter guess whether you're even eligible for the role.
What else should I leave off my resume?
Anything an employer can't legally use or doesn't need: date of birth, marital status, a photo (in the US), and any government ID numbers. Skip full street addresses for past employers too; company name and city is plenty. For the errors that cost interviews beyond the header, see our breakdown of common resume mistakes and how to fix them.
Larbi is a self-taught software engineer and the founder of Roleframe. He built it after getting tired of rewriting his resume for every single application. Having built ATS software himself, he knew exactly what those filters do to resumes on the other side. He writes about what actually gets you past ATS and in front of recruiters, based on thousands of real job descriptions, not recycled advice.
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