A resume header is the top section of your resume, not to be confused with a resume heading (more on the distinction in a moment).
This section is the very first that a potential employer sees when skimming your resume. It’s also the most important to an applicant tracking system (ATS) when it’s creating your candidate profile and enabling you to be found.
As a recruiter, I want to identify the best-fit candidates as quickly as possible so I can start interviewing and filling the role. A profile with an inadequate header slows down my search - and can even cost you the job.
On this page, I explain exactly what goes into the resume header section, as well as formatting rules and mistakes to avoid. I also share easy-to-copy examples for different situations, so that you can apply these insights to your own resume right away.
A resume header and a resume heading are two very different things. Search results often confuse them, so let’s be precise.
Your header is the real estate at the very top of your resume: your name, job title, location, and contact information. It may also contain other optional elements such as a project or personal website, right to work status, and qualification acronyms.
A heading is a section label further down the page, such as "Skills", "Experience", or "Education".
If you’re a Microsoft Word user, there’s yet another meaning worth clearing up. Word has its own built-in "header", a dedicated region above your document's top margin, accessible through the Insert menu. This is a type of header, but it’s not a “resume” header.
The distinction matters. Many ATS can't read text placed in Word's header or footer region at all; they parse the body of the document and skip that area entirely. If your name and contact details are only placed in Word's header field, they may never make it into the recruiter's system, even though your resume looks complete on screen. Here’s what to do: type your resume header into the body of the document, formatted to look like a header, not into Word's header tool.
That's why searches for "resume header" often turn up conflicting advice about section headings. This page is about the block at the top.
A missing title, buried contact information, formatting that affects ATS parsing - all of this works against you and me.
Thankfully, the contents of a resume header are relatively straightforward. The universally-required elements are your name, professional title, city + state, contact details (phone, email), and a LinkedIn URL if you have one. Never include a work number or work email: you don’t want your current employer to know you’re looking, and these details may be invalid if a recruiter looks at your resume at a later date.
If you have a role-relevant qualification such as PhD, PMP, or MBA, the acronym can be added after your name, in a slightly smaller font size.
List a phone number, but don’t include your full street address for data privacy purposes: when HR needs this later on, they’ll ask. Just the city and state (plus country, if applying from abroad) are needed so the recruiter knows if you’re local (if it’s an in-person/hybrid role), need to relocate, or are seeking remote opportunities.
Leave off marital status and date of birth entirely: neither has any bearing on your ability to do the job, and including them opens the door to unconscious bias. The same logic applies to your email address. Keep it professional, since anything amusing or age-revealing (e.g. funmolly83@hotmail.com) creates the same risk.
Depending on your role, optional elements may include a portfolio, GitHub, or personal site link, more relevant for technical and creative professionals who need somewhere to point to their work.
Avoid putting a headshot photo in your header or anywhere in the document. While these are still expected in some countries, in the US, Canada, and most English-speaking markets this should not make an appearance. This is to avoid biased screening decisions based on age and appearance.
Finally, there’s situation-specific information that’s crucial to point out right away, like your willingness to relocate or visa/work permit status.
We delve further into the topic of what to leave out in 14 Things You Should Never Include in Your Resume.
Companies receive hundreds, sometimes thousands, of applications for a single opening, and the title in your header is often what decides whether I keep reading. If I'm hiring a Data Analyst and your title says Data Analyst, you've got my attention. If it's blank or doesn't match, I'll move on. The same logic extends to keywords throughout your resume - matching the posting's language gives you a better shot at both the ATS and the recruiter.
Many candidates also add a short summary beneath their contact details: a couple of lines covering your title, years of experience, and key strengths, tailored to the role. This is different from an objective statement, which tells the reader what you're looking for rather than what you are.
Objective statements have largely given way to the more direct summary, with one exception: career changers and recent graduates, where a brief explanatory line still reads as a summary, not a pure objective.
Should you include an introductory summary? Yes. Recruiters won't read a full resume without a reason to, and the summary, alongside your title, is often what gives them that reason. You'll see a few examples below.
Speaking of introducing yourself, this article walks through how to do that effectively on a resume, with copy-and-paste examples.
Let’s put it all together with some examples.
JOHN W. DOE, MBA
Regional Director - Retail Sales
New York, NY | 123 123-4567 | john.doe@email.com | linkedin.com/in/johnwdoe
Summary
Regional Sales Director with over 10 years of experience driving million dollar retail sales growth across multiple territories, with a robust reputation for turning underperforming areas into top revenue producers.
Suits: Candidates with a solid, unbroken track record in one field. No title change or story to explain, just clear credentials up front.
PRIYA SHARMA
Marketing Coordinator Transitioning to UX Research
Denver, CO | 303-778-4412 | priyasharma@email.com | linkedin.com/in/priyasharma
Summary
Marketing Coordinator with 4 years of campaign and analytics experience in ecommerce settings. Now applying that robust data-driven expertise to UX research.
Suits: Candidates moving into a new field, where the resume header needs to match the job posting, not the job history.
MARCUS O'LEARY
BSc. Computer Science Graduate | Junior Data Engineer
Atlanta, GA | 404-556-9903 | marcus.oleary@email.com | linkedin.com/in/marcusoleary
Summary
Computer science graduate with portfolio project experience in data pipelines and SQL. Completed entry-level data engineering internships at national retail and FMCG organizations.
Suits: Candidates with little or no paid experience in the field. The qualification and summary line together explain the person's suitability for their target role.
RUBEN WARRINGTON, PMP
Technical Project Manager
San Francisco, CA | 415-893-2109 | rubenw@email.com | linkedin.com/in/rubenw
Summary
PMP-certified Project Manager with 15 years of experience delivering technical projects across cross-functional engineering teams for Fortune 500s.
Suits: Candidates whose credential (PMP, MBA, CPA, RN, etc.) qualifies them for their expertise area.
ALANNA MABERLY
Staff Accountant
London, UK | +44 (0)949 341 8921 | alannamaberly@email.com | US Work Permit
Summary
Internationally experienced accountant with 4 years of expertise managing month-end close and reconciliations for mid-sized firms. Full US work authorization alongside excellent North American regulatory knowledge.
Suits: Candidates applying to a non-local role, where a status line (Work Permit, "Open to Relocation", "Remote Only") addresses the why.
JOHN W DOE - Page 2 | john.doe@email.com
Suits: Any multi-page resume. Page 2 only needs a name and one way to reach you, not the full header or summary repeated, saving space.
If you’d like to know more about optimizing a two page resume, check out this fantastic tutorial.
Calibri, Arial, and Garamond are common, clean choices. Times New Roman is now considered outdated.
Differentiate each part by size, for example 16pt for your name, 14pt for your job title, 12pt for contact details, bolded so they stand out from the body.
Left-aligned and centered both work - neither is more “correct” than the other. Pick one and use it consistently if you have a 2-page format. A centered header can be visually easier on the eye to a skimming reader, as it stands out from the left-aligned resume body, but really it’s a matter of your personal preference.
Keep spacing tight: a single line space between your name, job title, and contact details, then 1-2 lines before your summary, depending on how much room you have on the page.
A handful of common formatting choices look fine to the eye but can’t be easily parsed by ATS. These include text boxes, tables, multi-columns, and icons that replace text. So keep the header as plain text in the document body, formatted with font size and bold rather than boxes or graphics.
When you’ve put your header together, run it through our ATS checker to make sure everything reads correctly.
As we've seen, a resume header is a relatively straightforward section to craft. Sometimes, job seekers are confused by conflicting advice from online sources or people they know. That's when mistakes that may negatively impact your application can happen. Here are the most common that I come across:
Putting important information in Microsoft Word's header or footer: As most ATS can't detect these regions, I may not see anything you put here unless I look at your original document.
Unprofessional email addresses: As mentioned earlier, a casual or age-revealing email address shapes my impression of you before I've read a word of your experience.
A default or broken LinkedIn URL: LinkedIn assigns a long, generic URL by default. Customize it - it takes one minute. And check the link works before you apply anywhere: a 404 tells a recruiter you're either sharing the wrong URL or the profile itself no longer exists.
Inconsistent name on your resume and LinkedIn (or elsewhere): Your name should match exactly across your resume, LinkedIn, and any other profile a recruiter might find: "James" everywhere, not "James" here and "Jimmy" there.
Photos: Standard practice in the US, Canada, and most English-speaking markets is no photo, largely to keep screening free of appearance-based bias. Even if you include one, most ATS platforms strip it during parsing.
Overly lengthy header: I sometimes see candidates cram their summary and core competencies into the header itself, eating a quarter or third of the page and confusing ATS section detection. Give the summary its own space directly below the header, and let core competencies have their own section too.
With your header sorted, it's time for the rest of your resume. This tutorial walks through how to write one, or if you'd rather skip the guesswork entirely, our free resume builder will get you to a polished, application-ready resume in minutes.
Your name in the largest font on the page (around 16pt, bold), followed by your job title, then your location and contact details in a smaller font underneath (12-14pt). Keep it plain text, left-aligned or centered, with no icons, tables, or text boxes standing in for the actual words.
No. Leave your full street address off. City and state (plus country, if you're applying from abroad) is all a recruiter needs to know whether you're local or would need to relocate. Your street address gets shared with HR later, once it's actually relevant.
Either centered or left-aligned works, there's no single "correct" choice here. What matters more is picking one and sticking with it, especially if you're using a two-page format. Centered can read slightly cleaner to a skimming eye, but it's ultimately a matter of preference.
Your header is the whole block at the top of your resume: name, title, location, and contact details, plus summary. A headline (sometimes called a title line) is just the one line under your name stating your current or target role. It's part of your header, not a separate thing.
A short version, yes. Your name and one way to reach you (email or phone) is enough, something like "JOHN W DOE - Page 2 | john.doe@email.com". Repeating your full header wastes space a recruiter could spend on your experience.
Stick to clean, modern fonts that read well on screen and parse well in an ATS: Calibri, Arial, or Garamond are all safe choices. Times New Roman was popular in the past but is considered dated now.