Should I include a photograph

It depends entirely on where you are applying; the convention differs sharply between countries. Where you are unsure, leave it off, and where you include one, use a design built for it.

What about date of birth and marital status

Leave them off unless the country's own convention or the application system asks for them. They are rarely relevant to the work.

Is it worth including salary history

Only where a posting requires it, and then in the letter or the application form rather than on the résumé itself.

Do skill rating bars hurt

They can. The graphics often extract as decorative characters, and decorative characters cost eight points of parseability in the check here.

Is one small exaggeration worth it

No. It survives one reading and fails the first question about it, and by then the conversation is about your honesty rather than your work.

Guide · Résumé

What to leave off a résumé

Every line on a résumé is paid for in the reader's attention. Here is what to stop paying for, and what is worth the space instead.

ConxfolioPublished 2026-09-12

— every line is paid for.

A résumé is short by design, so everything on it is paid for in the reader's attention. These are the lines that cost more than they return.

Lines that say nothing

"References available on request." Six words everybody already assumes. The references guide covers what to do instead.
A vague objective. "Seeking a challenging role in a dynamic organisation" fits everyone and identifies nobody.
Character adjectives. Hard-working, detail-oriented, team player. All unverifiable, all in the reader's judgement rather than yours.
Generic interests. Reading, music, travelling. The interests guide has the test for what stays.
The word Résumé as a title. The reader knows what they are holding.

Details that create risk without creating value

A full street address. A date of birth or marital status, unless the country's convention or the application system asks. A personal identifier of any kind. Your current employer's confidential figures. A reason for leaving each job, which belongs in a conversation where you can answer the follow-up.

Constructions that damage the parse

Tables and multi-column layouts, which scramble reading order and cost twenty-two points of parseability in the ATS check when the pattern is detected. Text boxes and sidebars, which land anywhere in the extracted string. Contact details in the page header, which are often skipped entirely. Decorative bullets and icon glyphs, which cost eight points. Skill rating bars, which are decoration pretending to be data. The format guide covers all five in detail.

Dates written two ways

Shortened years cost eight points of parseability, and mixing month-and-year dates with numeric ones costs four more. Neither is a catastrophe; both are free to fix and visible to a human reader as carelessness.

Claims you cannot support

An inflated job title. A qualification translated upwards. A skill you used once, four years ago, listed as current. A figure invented to fill the measurable line. Each of these survives exactly one reading, and the cost of being caught is out of proportion to the gain. The measurement guide covers what to write when the honest number does not exist.

Things that are simply out of date

Modules from a degree you finished eight years ago. Software nobody has run this decade, unless the posting names it. Six bullet points on a role from 2011. The guide to how far back to go covers the compression.

What to put in the space

One more achievement line with a number in it. A project you have not written up. A sentence in the summary that only applies to you. Open the résumé builder, save a version first, then cut and see what the page gained. If the score holds and the page is shorter, everything you removed was decoration.

Two things people remove that should stay

Dates. A history without them reads as concealment, and the experience evidence a parse depends on largely rests on them. And the ordinary roles between the impressive ones: deleting a job to make a career look tidier creates a gap that a reader has to explain to themselves, and the gap guide covers how cheap it is to keep the line instead.

The rule underneath both is that a résumé is a record. Editing it for emphasis is expected; editing it into a different history is not, and the difference surfaces at a reference check.

The test for anything you are unsure about

Ask what the line gives a reader that they cannot get from another line on the page, and whether you would be happy to be asked about it. Anything that fails the first test is duplication. Anything that fails the second is a risk you are carrying for no gain. Everything that passes both has earned its space, however unconventional it looks, and the format guide covers the separate question of whether it survives an extraction.

What a second reader catches

Ask somebody outside your field to read the page and tell you what they think you do. The gap between their answer and your job is made of jargon, missing context and lines that assume knowledge they do not have. That is a faster edit than any checklist, and it finds the thing no list can, which is a page that is accurate and still does not explain you.

Then ask somebody inside your field which line they would ask about first. If the answer is not one of your best three, the order needs work rather than the content.

Clear the page

Remove what is not evidence and see what the space buys. Versions are saved in this browser, so nothing is lost.

Open the résumé builder Check the result

Questions

Should I include a photograph: It depends entirely on where you are applying; the convention differs sharply between countries. Where you are unsure, leave it off, and where you include one, use a design built for it.
What about date of birth and marital status: Leave them off unless the country's own convention or the application system asks for them. They are rarely relevant to the work.
Is it worth including salary history: Only where a posting requires it, and then in the letter or the application form rather than on the résumé itself.
Do skill rating bars hurt: They can. The graphics often extract as decorative characters, and decorative characters cost eight points of parseability in the check here.
Is one small exaggeration worth it: No. It survives one reading and fails the first question about it, and by then the conversation is about your honesty rather than your work.

Conxfolio is a free set of four career tools: a résumé builder with 37 rendered layouts, an ATS résumé checker that prints its own arithmetic, a cover letter builder that traces every proof paragraph back to the line it came from, and a portfolio builder with 20 authored designs. There is no account to create, nothing is held back for a paid plan, and no language model is used anywhere in the product, so the readers, the score and the letter are deterministic code you can check.