Resumes: Contact Data

What should you include as "contact data"?

1. Definitely your home address. In full. Nicely formatted.

2. Your home phone number is also very good. Be sure you have an answering machine/service on it, and it works. And remember to CHECK IT! It may help to ensure that the number is in standard international format. Mainly, if you're in the USA, don't just put (XXX) YYY-ZZZZ, but +1-XXX-YYY-ZZZZ. Include all numbers that must be dialed in order to get to your phone from anywhere in the world. Even if the job you want is local to you, corporate headquarters may be in another state or country.

3. But generally not your work phone number, unless your boss already knows you are looking for work and is very understanding about use of company resources (i.e., their phone lines) for your personal uses. You might not think it's "personal", but since it's not related to your current company's work, it is.

4. An email address is generally good if you're looking for a high-tech job. But, if your user ID is anything but your name or initials or some meaningless garble assigned to you, be wary of what picture it could present to a prospective employer. For instance, if your address is something like eatme@hotanus.com, don't expect to get hired by any prudes. You may think that's a good thing, but it only takes one prude in the whole process to turn you down, from the initial HR drone to the hiring manager to the approving VP.

   If you intend to put your resume on the web, make it a mailto link. However, there is another issue to consider, in that spammers could "harvest" your address. You can cut down on this somewhat if you are entitled to the user ID "postmaster" anywhere. See my spam pages for more info.

5. A homesite URL might be good -- but could also be bad! Consider carefully what's on your web page, and what sort of picture it could present to a prospective employer. Again, also consider carefully what picture the URL itself might present (such as www.hotanus.com/~eatme/butt.html), even if the content is fine.

   Again, if you put a version on the web, make it a link.

6. A fax number (again, home, not work, unless you have the boss's permission) might be useful... but frankly, probably not.