What Contact Information to Put on Your CV (and What to Leave Out)
It sounds trivial, but a surprising number of strong candidates lose interviews to a typo in a phone number or an unprofessional email. Your contact block is the one part of the CV that must be flawless. Here's what belongs there.
The essentials
Start with the four details every employer needs to identify and reach you: your full name, a phone number with country code, a professional email address, and your city and country. That's the core of a contact block, and it must be flawless — a single wrong digit in a phone number or a typo in an email address can quietly end an application before it begins, no matter how strong the rest of the CV is. Put these at the very top, in plain text rather than inside an image or header graphic, so an applicant tracking system reads them correctly. Keep them on one or two lines so they're easy to scan. Then double-check every character out loud before you send — it's the cheapest insurance on your whole job search. Everything else, from LinkedIn links to what you deliberately leave out, builds on this flawless core.
Use a professional email
An address like firstname.lastname@gmail.com signals professionalism; nicknames or old playful handles undercut you instantly. If your email isn't professional, create a new one just for job applications — it takes two minutes and it matters.
Helpful links to add
A LinkedIn profile is now expected for most roles — include the URL and make sure the profile matches your CV. Developers can add GitHub, designers a portfolio, writers a personal site. Only link to things that strengthen your case and that you keep up to date.
What to leave out
Skip your full street address (city and country is enough), national ID numbers, date of birth in most Western markets, marital status, and religion. They add risk, not value. Regional norms vary, so match local expectations — but when unsure, less personal data is safer.
Keep it clean with write.cv
write.cv puts your contact details in a tidy, ATS-readable header — plain text, not buried in an image — so systems and humans both pick them up correctly. Fill them once and they format perfectly in every template.