Picture a recruiter who has decided to call you. That is the moment your resume header exists for, and it is a strange place to take risks, yet headers are where resumes hide some of their most common self-inflicted wounds: decorative layouts that scramble in parsing, dead links, an email address from 2009, and a missing phone number because it lived inside an icon graphic. This guide covers exactly what belongs in the header, what to drop, and the formatting pitfalls that separate a header that works from one that merely looks finished.
The five things every resume header needs
1. Your name, largest text on the page, on its own line. Use the professional version of your name consistently across resume, LinkedIn, and email signature so the recruiter's mental file has one label. If you go by a middle name or a shortened form, use it; the resume is not a legal document.
2. A phone number with area code, one only. Make sure the voicemail box attached to it is set up, not full, and has a greeting you would be comfortable with a hiring manager hearing.
3. A professional email address. More on the ways this one goes wrong below.
4. Your location, as city and state or city and country. No street address; details in the next section.
5. One or two relevant links, LinkedIn for nearly everyone, plus a portfolio or GitHub where the field expects it. Beyond two links, you are diluting attention rather than adding it.
That is the complete list. Everything else people put in headers, from photos to birth dates to full mailing addresses, subtracts more than it adds, as covered in the broader guide to what to put on a resume.
One optional addition earns its place in specific cases: a professional descriptor line under your name, such as "Senior payroll specialist" or "CPA · Manufacturing accounting." It works when your target is consistent across applications and your current title undersells you; it misfires when it just repeats the title already visible two inches below. Treat it as a label for the file folder the recruiter is about to put you in, and only include it if you want that exact folder.
Address on a resume: city and state is enough
Nobody has mailed a candidate anything in years, so the full street address serves no hiring purpose. What remains are the downsides: it eats a line, it hands out personal data to every system and inbox your resume passes through, and a precise address invites commute-distance guessing that never works in your favor.
"Denver, CO" does everything an employer legitimately needs: it confirms your market for local roles, sets your time zone for remote ones, and satisfies parsers that expect a location field.
Two edge cases worth handling deliberately. Relocating? Write the destination with a note: "Relocating to Austin, TX (August 2026)." Listing only your current distant city gets you quietly filtered for local roles you would happily move for. Fully remote search? "Portland, OR (open to remote)" reads clearly, keeps the location field parseable, and states the preference without a cover-letter explanation.
LinkedIn, GitHub, and portfolio links: when and how
LinkedIn earns its place in almost every header, because many recruiters will look you up regardless and the link saves them from finding the wrong Jordan Smith. Two conditions: claim a custom URL (linkedin.com/in/yourname, thirty seconds in settings, replacing the string of digits), and make sure the profile agrees with the resume on titles and dates. A mismatch reads as carelessness at best. Getting the profile itself into shape is its own project, covered in our LinkedIn profile tips.
GitHub belongs on engineering resumes when it shows real work: projects with commits and readable READMEs. An account containing two forks and a tutorial exercise is better left off; an empty link is worse than no link.
Portfolio links are effectively mandatory for design, writing, photography, and similar fields. Link the portfolio root, not a specific piece, confirm it loads fast on a phone, and check it the same week you apply.
Format all links as readable text (linkedin.com/in/mayaokafor), not as "click here" or a bare icon. In a PDF the visible text should be the URL itself, so it survives printing and parsing intact.
Email addresses that hurt you, and the two-minute fix
An email address is a tiny writing sample, and some of them say the wrong thing. The problem categories:
- Relics of a former self: hotgurl2007, packersfan420, xxdragonsl4yerxx. Funny to friends, unhelpful in a stack of applicants.
- Shared or family addresses: thejohnsonfamily@… raises the question of who else reads the reply.
- Work addresses. Applying from your current employer's domain signals you job-hunt on company systems, and you lose the thread the day you leave.
- Ancient providers. Fairly or not, an AOL address dates you; a school .edu address expires.
- Addresses with confusable strings: ll vs 11, O vs 0. Every transcription is a chance to lose an interview invitation.
The fix costs two minutes: a free address in the pattern firstname.lastname (plus a digit if taken) at a mainstream provider, used exclusively for the job search. The dedicated inbox also means application replies never drown in newsletters, and you can retire it when the search ends.
Why headers in text boxes and images break resume parsers
Here is the mechanical problem. When you submit a resume, an applicant tracking system extracts the document's text and maps it into fields: name, email, phone, location. The recruiter often works from those fields, not from your beautiful original.
Several popular header treatments interfere with that extraction:
- Text boxes and layout tables. Some extraction paths read them out of order or skip them, and a header is the worst possible content to lose.
- The document's header/footer region in Word. Some extractors ignore this region by design, so contact details placed there can simply vanish from the parsed record.
- Icon fonts and graphics standing in for the words "phone" and "email." A phone-shaped glyph is not text; if your number lives inside an exported image banner, the parsed profile has no number at all.
- Names rendered as stylized graphics or split into decorative letter spacing ("M A Y A"), which can extract as separated letters rather than a name.
None of this rejects your application, but it can mean the difference between a recruiter one click from calling you and a recruiter looking at an anonymous profile. The safe pattern is dull and effective: header content as plain text in the main document body, top of page one. The full pipeline, and what else it drops, is explained in how resume parsing works. If you want certainty about your own file, a free resume checker will show you the extracted name, email, and phone so you can verify all three survived.
Header examples: minimal, standard, and creative-role
Minimal, for maximum space efficiency:
Maya Okafor Denver, CO · (555) 214-8890 · maya.okafor@gmail.com
Standard, right for most people:
Daniel Kovacs Columbus, OH · (555) 812-3304 · daniel.kovacs@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/danielkovacs
With portfolio, for creative and technical fields:
Ines Delgado — Product designer Brooklyn, NY (open to remote) · (555) 447-2210 · ines.delgado@gmail.com inesdelgado.design · linkedin.com/in/inesdelgado
Note what varies and what does not. The creative version adds a professional descriptor line and a portfolio, and can carry the template's accent color. But all three keep the same bones: plain text, name largest, one line or two of details separated by simple dots. Once the header is done, it stays done across every application; the sections below it, which change per target, are the subject of our step-by-step resume guide.
Frequently asked questions
Should I put my full address on my resume?
No. City and state (or city and country) is the modern standard. The street address adds privacy exposure and commute-based filtering risk while serving no purpose an employer can name.
Does a resume header need a photo?
In the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, no, and including one can work against you because many employers avoid photo-bearing applications for bias-compliance reasons. Some European and Asian markets differ; follow the convention of the country you are applying in.
What if I have two phone numbers or emails?
Pick one of each. Multiple contact options do not double your reachability; they introduce a decision, and occasionally a typo, where you want zero friction.
Should my name include credentials like MBA or RN?
Field-dependent. Licensed clinical credentials (RN, BSN, CPA, PE) after the name are conventional and useful. An MBA is usually better left to the education section, though norms vary by industry; when in doubt, mirror how senior people in your target field present themselves.
Make sure the right person can reach you
A header fails silently: you never learn about the call that did not happen. Workplacea's free resume checker reads your file the way hiring software does and shows whether your name, email, and phone extract cleanly, and every header in the editor is plain-text by construction, so this is one failure mode you can permanently cross off.