Should I put "references available upon request" on a résumé?
Leave it off
Cut the line. It states the default and spends a line doing it.
Why it costs you
Every employer knows they can ask for references, and no candidate has ever refused. The sentence therefore carries no information: it announces a fact that was already true and would have been true had you written nothing. What it does carry is a faint signal about the writer, because it is the most recognisable piece of résumé boilerplate still in circulation, and a reader who has seen a thousand of them registers it as filler rather than thoroughness.
What to put there instead
Delete it and give the line to work. If a posting asks for references, supply them on a separate sheet with each name, title, employer, your relationship to them and how long you worked together, formatted to match your résumé so the two read as one document. Ask each person first, and tell them which role you have applied for, so the call does not arrive cold. Keeping the sheet separate is also the courteous handling of other people’s contact details, which otherwise end up in applicant systems neither you nor they can audit or delete.
When the usual advice is wrong
Write something in that space only when the reference itself is unusual and material: a named referee the reader would recognise, or a role where references from a specific institution are part of the qualification. Even then, name the person rather than announcing the availability of unnamed people.
A worked example
Before
References available upon request.
After
(nothing: the line is deleted, and one more bullet moves up the page)
Removing it costs no information and returns a line to the part of the document that is actually read.
Common questions
- Should I put "references available upon request" on a résumé?
- Cut the line. It states the default and spends a line doing it. Delete it and give the line to work. If a posting asks for references, supply them on a separate sheet with each name, title, employer, your relationship to them and how long you worked together, formatted to match your résumé so the two read as one document. Ask each person first, and tell them which role you have applied for, so the call does not arrive cold. Keeping the sheet separate is also the courteous handling of other people’s contact details, which otherwise end up in applicant systems neither you nor they can audit or delete.
- Why does ""references available upon request"" weaken a résumé?
- Every employer knows they can ask for references, and no candidate has ever refused. The sentence therefore carries no information: it announces a fact that was already true and would have been true had you written nothing. What it does carry is a faint signal about the writer, because it is the most recognisable piece of résumé boilerplate still in circulation, and a reader who has seen a thousand of them registers it as filler rather than thoroughness.
- When is it right to keep it?
- Write something in that space only when the reference itself is unusual and material: a named referee the reader would recognise, or a role where references from a specific institution are part of the qualification. Even then, name the person rather than announcing the availability of unnamed people.
Where this is corroborated
These career services publish guidance on this section. Each was read and checked to actually address it. They establish that the question is taken seriously; the argument above is ours.
- Harvard UniversityCreate a strong résumé, Harvard FAS Office of Career Services
- Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyRésumés, MIT Career Advising & Professional Development
- Yale UniversityRésumé advice and samples, Yale Law School Career DevelopmentLaw school guidance; legal hiring has conventions of its own.
Other sections
- An objective statementReplace it with two lines that say what you have done, not what you want.
- Your street addressCity and state, yes. Street address, almost never.
- A hobbies and interests sectionOnly where the interest is specific enough to be a fact rather than a mood.
Words worth fixing while you are in there
After the résumé
Deciding what goes on the page is the quick part.
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