Personal information on a CV: what to include, what to skip
The Cvizo team2 min read
A CV carries two kinds of personal detail: what an employer needs in order to assess you, and what they can only use against you. The second kind is larger than most people expect, and it moves with the border.
In short
- A photograph is ordinary in Poland and Germany, avoided in the UK, and a liability in the US.
- Date of birth, marital status and nationality do not belong on a US resume at all.
- City and country are enough anywhere. A street address only tells a recruiter your commute.
- Run one question over every line: does this help them judge whether I can do the job?
A CV carries two kinds of personal detail: what an employer needs in order to assess you, and what they can only use against you. The second kind is larger than most people expect, and it moves with the border. A photograph that is unremarkable in Poland will get your file set aside unread in the United States.
The fields that work against you in the US
A photograph. It is a liability for the employer, not for you. Some American companies instruct recruiters to discard any application carrying one, because a rejected candidate who can prove the employer saw their face has the opening of a discrimination claim. The safest reading is that a photo cannot help you there and can cost you the read.
In Poland and Germany a photo is still ordinary. In the UK it is not. If you are applying across markets, keep two files rather than compromising on one.
Date of birth, marital status, nationality. US resumes carry none of them, for the same reason. Parts of the EU still ask, and the Polish labour code explicitly lets an employer request a date of birth. Where it is not asked for, leaving it out costs you nothing.
A full home address. City and country are enough anywhere. The street line tells a recruiter how long your commute is, which is a decision you would rather make yourself.
The fields that are always expected
Your name, a working email, a phone number, and a link to whatever profile is the standard in your field. That is the whole list. Everything else on a CV should be there because it argues for you, not because a template had a slot for it.
One EU-specific addition: in Poland, a data-protection consent line is common practice, and the only version of it worth writing is the one that asks to be kept on file for future openings. There is no American equivalent, and adding one to a US application reads as a document written for somewhere else.
The test to run over every line
Take each piece of personal detail and ask: if I were rejected, could this line be the reason, and would I ever find out?
Your years of experience passes. You want that used, and if it counts against you the reason is visible and arguable. A photograph fails both halves: it can decide the outcome, and you will never be told that it did.
Whether a detail is private or public matters less than it seems. The useful line runs between information you can defend and information that gets used where you cannot see it.
