Contact details on a CV: what to include and how to write each line

A CV needs your name, one professional email address, one phone number written in international format and your town and country, placed in the body of the page. A full street address and ID numbers are rarely needed.1

Written 13 October 2026. CitedCV. How we write our guides

Check your CV for ATS problems, no account needed

Drop a PDF, DOCX or text file, or paste the text. You get a score, the problems a parser trips on, and your CV as a parser files it.

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Start by testing each detail the way a stranger would

Before you reword anything, use every detail exactly as it is printed, the way a recruiter in another office or another country would. A typo in one digit of a phone number costs more than any wording problem elsewhere on the page, and nothing else on the CV can make up for it.

Send a message to your address from an account that is not yours and check it arrives in the inbox, not in spam.
Ask a friend to dial the number exactly as printed. If you apply abroad, it must work when dialled from abroad.
Record a voicemail greeting that says your name, so a missed call can still end in a message.
Open every link on a phone browser while signed out and look at what loads.
Paste the whole CV into a plain text editor. Your name and each contact detail should come out first, in reading order.

The free checker at the top of this page looks at the same thing from the software side. It runs in your browser with no account, reports a missing email address as an error and a missing phone number as a note.

What careers services ask for in the contact block

The UK National Careers Service (NCS) asks for your name, phone number, email address and a link to your work network profile, if you have one. Prospects, the UK graduate careers service, asks for full name, home address, mobile number and email address, and then makes an exception: if you post your CV online, leave the home address out. Harvard's careers office counts missing email and phone information among its top five resume mistakes, and MIT's careers office says even a resume without a single typo is worthless if the contact information is missing. In Türkiye, TED University's guide wants name, address and phone at the top, with no labels such as "Name:" in front of them.

Detail	Include it?	How to write it	Based on
Name	Always	The name you use at work, in the same form on the CV, the letter and your profile	NCS, Prospects
Email	Always	One personal address built from your name	Prospects, TED University
Phone	Always	One mobile number: plus sign, country code, groups separated by spaces	NCS, Prospects, ITU-T E.123
Location	Usually	Town and country; a street address only if the employer asks for it	Prospects, Lever
Profile or portfolio link	If you have one	Written as text, without https://	NCS, Prospects, ITU-T E.123
Age, date of birth, marital status, nationality	Not on a UK CV	Leave out; other countries have their own rules	NCS

Email: an address that is plainly yours

Prospects asks for an email address that sounds professional and suggests opening a new account for job hunting if your usual one does not. TED University's guide gives nickname addresses as the example of what to avoid. Neither names a provider, so a free webmail account is fine as long as the part before the @ reads as your name.

Address patterns that work

firstname.lastname, the plainest choice when it is free.
firstname.middleinitial.lastname, or the name with a short number, when the plain version is taken.
Not your current employer's address: you lose it the day you leave, and the replies to your job search pass through your employer's mail system.
A student address only if you know your university keeps it working after you graduate.
One address for the whole application: CV, letter, online form and profile.

Write it so it can be copied

ITU-T Recommendation E.123, the international standard for printing contact details on letterheads and business cards, puts the email address in the plain user@domain form below the phone number, with the label "E-mail" optional when space is short. On a CV that means the address as text a reader can select and copy, not an envelope icon with the address hidden behind it.

Phone: the international format, from ITU-T E.123

E.123 was approved by the International Telecommunication Union on 2 February 2001 and is listed as in force when we read it on 13 October 2026. Four of its rules decide how a number should look on a CV that may be read in another country.

The plus sign comes first and precedes the country code; it tells the caller to dial their own international prefix.
Parentheses mark digits that are not always dialled, such as a trunk prefix, and should not be used in an international number.
Only spaces separate the groups of digits in an international number.
Grouping the digits is advisable because it helps people memorise, read out and print the number.

Worked conversions

Number	As written at home	Written for a reader abroad	Why it changes
Germany, the example inside E.123	(06) 65 43 21	+49 6 65 43 21	The bracketed trunk digit goes; 49 is Germany's code in the ITU list
Türkiye, BTK's own switchboard as BTK prints it	+90 (0312) 412 20 00	+90 312 412 20 00	E.123 keeps brackets and the digits in them out of an international number
Türkiye, an invented mobile	0532 000 00 00	+90 532 000 00 00	The same 0 that BTK puts inside brackets is dropped after +90
United States, the example inside E.123	(302) 123 4567	+1 302 123 4567	North America uses country code 1, so the plus form serves callers inside and outside it

Country codes are from the ITU list of assigned country codes (position on 15 December 2016): 1 United States, 49 Germany, 90 Türkiye. Zeros in the invented number mark digits to replace with your own.

One number is enough

Prospects asks for a mobile number, and E.123 allows a short label such as "Tel." before it. A home landline, a work extension and a second mobile only give a recruiter three chances to reach the wrong one. If you are moving country soon, print the number you will still answer during the hiring process.

Address: town and country is usually enough

The sources split here. Prospects lists a home address but tells you to drop it from a CV posted online; the NCS list does not mention an address at all; TED University's guide puts an address at the top, and its own sample CV shows a district and a city rather than a street and door number. For most applications the town and country answer the only question the address was there for: can this person get to the job, or will they need to move?

Name a place a parser can match

Lever's help page on resume parsing says a regional location such as "New York Metropolitan Area" is matched to the closest structured location and can be attributed wrongly. Write a real town and a country, "Izmir, Türkiye", not a region or a commuting area.

Applying from another country

Write where you live now. A planned move, a relocation date or a residence permit belongs in the cover letter or in a separate line the target country expects; the German and Dutch guides on personal details show that line for each country.

Artefact: one contact block, before and after

Three invented applicants. Each "before" line is a habit we see often; each "after" line follows the sources above.

Situation	Before	After	What changed
A graduate in Ankara applying to a UK employer	Name: Elif Arslan · Address: Kızılay Mah. 123. Sok. No: 4/7 Çankaya/Ankara · Tel: 0532 000 00 00 · elif_star94@example.com · Date of birth: 12.03.2001	Elif Arslan · Ankara, Türkiye · +90 532 000 00 00 · elif.arslan@example.com · linkedin.com/in/elif-arslan	Labels and street address gone, date of birth out (NCS), number in international form, email built from her name
A developer in Istanbul applying to a remote team in the Netherlands	Istanbul / TURKEY · +90 (0532) 000 00 00 · can.ozturk@currentemployer.example · https://www.github.com/can-ozturk/	Can Öztürk · Istanbul, Türkiye · +90 532 000 00 00 · can.ozturk@example.com · github.com/can-ozturk	Brackets and the 0 removed, personal address instead of the work one, link shortened to text
A sales coordinator posting a CV on a public job board	Full street address, postcode, home landline and mobile	Town and country, one mobile, one email	Home address left off a CV posted online (Prospects); one number

Where the block sits, and what software does with it

Greenhouse, an applicant tracking system, lists a name and contact information placed in the header, the footer or a text box among the causes of an unsuccessful resume parse. When a parse fails, Greenhouse attaches the file and a recruiter types your details in by hand. Put the block in the first lines of the page body, in ordinary text.

What CitedCV's checker and templates do with it

The checker files every line above the first section heading under Header in its parser view, so you can see whether your details came out whole.
Contact makes up 10% of its score: full marks for an email and a phone, 80 for an email alone, 30 with no email.
CitedCV's templates print each detail as text with a short label (Email, Phone, LinkedIn), in the page body. In the PDF and Word exports, a link typed without https:// still opens.

Privacy: what to keep off the page

Age, date of birth, marital status and nationality on a UK CV, per the NCS. Germany and the Netherlands handle these differently, and each has its own guide.
Identity, passport and social security numbers. None of the CV guides cited here asks for them; an employer that needs them asks later, through its own forms.
A home address on a CV you post on a public site, per Prospects.
Messaging handles and a second email, which add ways to be contacted without adding anything a recruiter needs.

One setting is worth checking. LinkedIn lets you decide whether people who have your email address or phone number can find your profile through them, from anyone down to nobody. Once your CV circulates, both details are in other people's hands, so choose that setting on purpose.

If someone who has seen your CV asks for a passport copy or bank details before any interview, read the guide on overseas job scams first.

Who this page is not for

You need the country rules for a photo, date of birth or residence status: the German and Dutch personal details guides cover those.
You are filling in an online application form. The form decides which fields exist; this page is about the CV file.
You want to know how to set up and write a LinkedIn or portfolio link; that has its own guide.

Next steps

Fix the block, then drop the file into the checker above and open the parser view: the first lines should be your name and the details you chose, in that order. If you build the CV in CitedCV, the contact fields go into the same single block in every template, and the exports are read back by a text extractor after they are made.

Questions people ask

What contact details should be on a CV?

Your name, one email address, one phone number and your town and country. Add a LinkedIn or portfolio link if you have one; the National Careers Service lists the same set.

Should I put my full address on my CV?

Usually not. Town and country are enough for most applications, and Prospects says to leave your home address off any CV you post online.

How do I write my phone number on a CV for jobs abroad?

Start with a plus sign and the country code, drop the trunk digit, and separate the groups with spaces only: +90 532 000 00 00, not +90 (0532) 000 00 00.

What counts as a professional email address for a CV?

One built from your name, such as firstname.lastname at any mainstream provider. Avoid nicknames, birth years that look like nicknames, and your current employer's address.

Can I put my contact details in the header of a Word CV?

Better not. Greenhouse lists contact information in a header, footer or text box among causes of an unsuccessful parse. Keep it in the first lines of the body.

Should I add my date of birth to my contact details?

Not on a UK CV: the National Careers Service says to leave out age and date of birth. Germany and Türkiye have different habits, covered in their own guides.

Can I leave my phone number off my CV?

You can, but recruiters expect it: Harvard counts missing email and phone information among top resume mistakes, and CitedCV's checker flags a missing number as a note.

Sources

National Careers Service, How to write a CV: CV sectionsnationalcareers.service.gov.uk/careers-advice/cv-sections
Prospects, How to write a CVwww.prospects.ac.uk/careers-advice/cvs-and-cover-letters/how-to-write-a-cv
Harvard Mignone Center for Career Success, Create a strong resumecareerservices.fas.harvard.edu/resources/create-a-strong-resume/
MIT Career Advising and Professional Development, Resumescapd.mit.edu/resources/resumes/
TED University Career Center, internship and CV booklet (Turkish, PDF)career.tedu.edu.tr/sites/default/files/docs/staj_kitapcik_0-1_1.pdf
ITU-T Recommendation E.123 (02/2001), Notation for national and international telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and web addresseswww.itu.int/rec/T-REC-E.123-200102-I/en
ITU, List of ITU-T Recommendation E.164 assigned country codes (position on 15 December 2016)www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-t/opb/sp/T-SP-E.164D-2016-PDF-E.pdf
Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), English home pagewww.btk.gov.tr/en
Greenhouse Support, Unsuccessful resume parsesupport.greenhouse.io/hc/en-us/articles/200989175-Unsuccessful-resume-parse
Lever Help, Understanding resume parsinghelp.lever.co/s/article/Understanding-Resume-Parsing
LinkedIn Help, Manage your profile's visibility on and off LinkedInwww.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a548106