Candidates: Please Tell Me Your Location!
If you’re applying for roles or sending along a resume to one of my colleagues as a referral, please ensure your location is clearly visible on your profile.
Leaving off your location from your profile or resume is a big bad mistake as far as I am concerned. It can’t lead to good things for you.
I fear that a resume writer or guidance counselor somewhere advised people that, instead of telling recruiters the truth of where you live, you should lie about it or hide it, which is a really, really dumb idea.
Why You Might Hide Your Location on your Resume?
Beats me, actually, but I can think of three reasons why you might hide your location from your profile or resume:
- You are willing to work anywhere or relocate to anywhere.
- You want to work remotely.
- You are going to move to my town soon and don’t want your Milwaukee address to throw me off.
Each of these reasons seems logical up-front, but don’t actually help you with any of these items because hiding your location from me just makes me think you’re hiding information (which is bad on a resume).
If you want to work anywhere, or are willing to relocate anywhere, please just tell me that on your profile. If I am paying for relocation, I will be fine that you live somewhere else.
If you want to work remotely, that’s also fine because… well, you’ll be working remotely. If I am OK with remote workers, I will be fine knowing where you live.
On the third one, if you’re truly moving soon, please tell me where you’re moving to and have a date by which you will have relocated. And, hint: “when I have a job” isn’t the answer I am looking for.
Tricking me into interviewing you only to find out you’re remote is… let’s call it ‘bad’.
Like getting a reservation for a restaurant and they give your table away, or like buying something online and they ship you something else, the old “Oops! I didn’t realize you weren’t local” bait-and-switch trick isn’t the way to start a possible relationship with your future employer.
Or anyone.
Ever.
Please, just tell me where you are and where you hope to be down the road from here. That’s all recruiters want to know.
P.S. If you’re applying to an applicant system, check how the system parsed your resume or linkedin profile to be sure the location transferred over!
