Emma The candidate’s home address on the resume is one of the fields that must be taken into consideration when filling out a job application: will I have to enter it or is it better not to? If I don’t, am I wrong? And if I do, what risks do I run?
Let’s make a premise: indicating your home address on your CV is different from indicating the city where you live. For this reason, as we will see immediately below, even specifying it or not requires different precautions.
Address on the CV: yes or no?
The presence of the home address on the CV is included among those elements that can determine the attractiveness or otherwise of a CV in the eyes of a recruiter: there are those who see this specification as useless and those who consider it necessary, to understand if a candidate is really interesting for the job position for the which you are proposing.
The approach to this question is therefore twofold: there are situations in which it is a good idea to declare your home address and others in which it is not absolutely necessary.
Address on the CV: when is it useful to put it?
In full compliance with the privacy law, it is not mandatory to insert specific data such as date of birth, gender, and residential address on the CV but if you do wants to do is good to move correctly.
The first thing to do is to evaluate if it is information necessary to be considered for the job position for which you are applying.
An example
You are applying for a job position as a delivery boy for a company in Rome. You live in Rome and therefore specifying the city of residence seems like a good idea. In reality Rome is such a big and busy city that it can take a long time to get to work if you live in a completely different area, to the point that this being an “on call” position you may not be able to get the job done. In this case, to help the employer understand if you can be the optimal candidate, entering your home address or specifying the neighborhood where you live is a useful indication.
What happens though if you are applying for a position not specifically linked to the area you belong to?
Address on the CV: when is it considered useless information?
The above case is really special but on closer inspection for most of the locations the home address has no value for the purposes of selection.
An employer does not need to know specifically where a candidate or a worker lives, but does need to know if they have the skills necessary for the job and if it can be a good element for the company.
An example
You are applying for a job position as a social media manager in Padua. You live in Padua and you are tempted to enter the address on your CV to make a good impression: how useful will this information be during the selection phase? In this case, the employer does not need to know where you live, but they need to know that you can perform the required duties and that to do so you have to go to the office, regardless of the area of the city you live in.
Specify your city of residence on your CV
However, it is a good idea to always specify, regardless of your job position, the city of residence for various reasons without cheating.
Let’s say you are applying for a position in Milan, but you live in Legnano: your potential employer needs to know that you live in Legnano because they have to expect professionalism from you but at the same time they have to plan a certain flexibility since every in the morning you will have to travel several kilometers to reach your workplace.
Putting the employer in the position of having useful information about the candidate is a good idea for a good impression and to clarify fundamental details immediately.
Let’s say instead that you are applying for a position in Bologna and you already live in Bologna: with the same professionalism and competence, the recruiter will probably favor the candidate who does not have to travel too much to reach the job.
What happens if you live in one place and apply for a position elsewhere?
In the specific case of sending cv remotely, it is absolutely necessary to specify your but, at the same time, openly declare that you are looking for work outside your area of residence and that you are willing to move (with or without a family, please specify).
Just add
“available for immediate transfer”
or
“available for transfer starting from added data”.
In this way you will specify who is evaluating your current situation and what you are looking for for your future, allowing them to arrive at a first decision related to yours application.
In summary
- The home address must be entered only in very specific cases;
- The city must always be entered;
- If residence and domicile coincide, enter the name of the city without specifying the precise address;
- If the address and residence are different, it is advisable to insert the one you consider most useful for the selection;
- If your domicile or residence is different from the place where you are looking for work, you must specify that you are available for a transfer.