The rule of the day relates to contact information that you offer to potential employers and recruiters.
How much contact information do you put on your resume so that hiring managers and recruiters can contact you?
As a recruiter, I sometimes get frustrated when I need to contact someone urgently – contract jobs for example often get filled quickly so I sometimes need to get on the phone with someone asap – and only find an email address for someone or a phone number that just rings and rings when I call it or it’s shut off and has no voice mail.
These days of course, you also find people through LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace or through a Google search so while it’s sometimes easier to find people than before, it can be difficult to actually get them on the phone sometimes.
When it comes to contact information, offering a phone number (ideally a cellphone) with voice mail and an active, professional sounding email address (nothing silly like 2hot4u@isp.com or anything like that) is the best way to go I think.
These days with the rise in identity theft and so on, some people are worried about including a home address in an online profile that could get viewed by thousands of people they don’t know. Personally, I like when a person has their address on their resume because that’s how I find out if they’re applying for jobs in their home area or if they’re dreaming and are applying for a job that is a 1 hour commute away.
Having said that, when you post your resume to major online job boards you can always mention just the city you live in (rather than your complete address) and can probably also mention somewhere the specific geographic area you want to work in.
Bottom line: the easier you make it for people to find you, the easier it will be for them to find you which when you’re looking for a new job, is usually what you want.
