The header sits at the top of every resume, yet it causes more quiet rejections than most candidates realize. ATS systems parse it first. Recruiters glance at it to decide whether to call you. A few small mistakes in this section can mean your application disappears before anyone reads your bullets.
What Your Header Actually Needs
Keep it to the essentials. A clean, functional header includes:
- Your full name (the name you use professionally, not necessarily your legal name)
- One phone number, checked regularly
- One professional email address
- Your city and state (or city and country if you are applying internationally)
- Your LinkedIn profile URL, customized so it reads cleanly
- A link to a portfolio or GitHub only if it is relevant and current
That is it. You do not need a full street address. You do not need a headshot. You do not need your date of birth, your GPA in the header, or a personal tagline.
The ATS Formatting Problem Most Candidates Create
Many early-career candidates build their header inside a table, a text box, or a multi-column layout. It looks polished in Word or Google Docs. It breaks almost every ATS parser.
When an ATS cannot read your header correctly, it may pull your phone number as your name, skip your email entirely, or fail to parse the file at all. You never get a rejection notice. Your application simply disappears.
The fix is plain: write your header as regular text, left-aligned or centered, with no tables and no text boxes. Use line breaks or a simple separator like a vertical bar to space out the elements on one or two lines.
Example of a clean, parser-safe header:
Jordan Lee
[email protected] | (555) 214-8833 | Chicago, IL | linkedin.com/in/jordanlee
That format loads correctly in every major ATS and reads cleanly to a recruiter in under three seconds.
The Email Address Problem
This one is small and embarrassing to miss. If your email address still includes a graduation year, a nickname from high school, or a number string that looks random, swap it before you send a single application. A free Gmail account with your first and last name costs nothing and removes a distraction.
What Not to Put in the Header
- Your full mailing address (city and state is enough for most domestic roles)
- A photo (outside of certain international markets, photos create legal and bias risk for employers and are not expected)
- A personal website that has not been updated recently
- Multiple phone numbers
- Your pronouns in the header (if you include them, a dedicated line below your name works better than embedding them next to your phone number)
One Quick Check Before You Submit
Copy the text of your resume header and paste it into a plain text editor. If the name, email, phone number, and city all appear on separate, readable lines with no garbled characters, your header will parse correctly. If the columns collapse or the text runs together, go back and rebuild it as plain text.
The header is the one part of a resume that should never try to be clever. Make it readable, make it accurate, and move on.