Antiquated Things You No Longer Need to Include on Your Résumé
Times have changed. Remove these four things from your résumé.
When writing a résumé, most people have similar questions: One page or two? Education or work first? Should I include publications and awards? A lot of those decisions are varied based on preference and field. We have lots of blogs on writing résumés (and great cover letters!), but in this one, we’ll focus on which antiquated sections you can leave off.
Space on your résumé is essential, especially if you are electing to have a one page résumé. The top half is the most important real estate to highlight what you want the hiring team to see immediately in case they don't make it to the bottom half. Don’t waste it with unimportant information.
Delete the objectives. The stated objective section, that little one to two sentence explainer of what job you hope to attain, can go. It’s a relic of the old days when people would send out their résumés and CVs en masse in hopes of a call back for an available position. We simply don’t apply for jobs in that way anymore. These days there’s no need for it. Obviously, your objective is to attain the job in the field that you’re applying for. Use that space for something more important like the skills you gained and project impact in your most recent role.
Remove your address. Candidates used to include their addresses on their résumés because correspondence occurred via postal mail. With the invention of email and phones, that doesn’t happen anymore. You can remove your full address from your résumé as it’s not relevant to the application. You may want to keep your city and state listed on your résumé so that the hiring team knows whether or not you’re local to their office or where you’re located for a remote position, but it’s up to you and relative to the position to which you're applying.
Save references for later. No need to waste space on your résumé listing your references (unless the application requires it). Hiring teams won’t call references until the final rounds of a hiring process, in which case they will ask you for your references. By not including your references, you can be sure that references aren’t being called without your knowledge and you can give a heads-up to your references and prepare them for a potential call.
Keep previous salaries private. Do not list your previous salaries on your résumé. Your previous wages have nothing to do with how much you will be paid for the position you’re applying for. Any organization worth their salt will not ask you about your previous wages, and in some states, it is illegal to ask. Hopefully, the organization will list the salary range on the post so the conversation can be transparent and honest—because they definitely have an allotted range for the position in their annual budget. You do not need to disclose your previous earnings, but they should be transparent about what they can afford to pay you.