Deciding which personal details on CV documents to include is partly about being professional and partly about protecting your privacy. Most UK employers need a reliable way to contact you and enough information to evaluate your suitability. They do not normally need your date of birth, a family photograph or a complete residential address just to decide whether to invite you for an interview.
Personal details on CV: a practical checklist
Begin with essentials: your name, a telephone number you use, a professional email address and, where useful, a broad location such as a town or county. Add a relevant professional profile or portfolio link only if it is accurate, suitable for an employer to view and genuinely helpful. Make sure all contact details are correct; a misplaced digit can matter more than any clever wording elsewhere.
- Usually useful: name, telephone number, email and general location.
- Sometimes useful: professional portfolio, LinkedIn profile, relevant professional registration where requested.
- Usually unnecessary on a general CV: date of birth, marital status, photograph, national insurance number and full home address.
- Application-specific: eligibility, identity or monitoring information provided through the employer’s separate process when legitimately required.
Should you put your age or date of birth on a CV?
Usually, no. Your qualifications, skills and evidence are the information that helps an employer evaluate your application. The National Careers Service CV guidance advises applicants not to include age, date of birth, marital status or nationality in their CV contact details. This is sensible general advice, not permission to conceal information on a later form where it is lawfully and appropriately required.
Age is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Acas guidance on recruitment and discrimination explains that employers must not discriminate because of age and that certain monitoring or role-specific questions have separate rules. If you are asked to complete an equality monitoring form, keep it distinct from your promotional CV and follow the stated instructions.
Do UK CVs need a photograph?
For many ordinary UK job applications, a photograph adds little and is not normally expected. It uses space you could devote to experience and skills. There are exceptions: certain performance, modelling or other appearance-relevant casting processes may have genuinely different requirements. Do not generalise from these specialist processes to office, retail, care, engineering or administrative recruitment.
If an employer specifically asks for a photo, consider whether the request is relevant and whether you are comfortable proceeding. Avoid sending extra identifying documents simply to appear enthusiastic. A professional-looking application comes from clarity and evidence, not personal imagery. An online professional profile may contain your picture; that does not mean it belongs inside your CV itself.
Is your full home address necessary?
A broad location, such as “Cardiff”, “Greater Manchester” or “Bristol area”, is often enough to indicate your likely commuting area. A full postal address may be needed later for a contract or checks, but those are different stages. If you plan to relocate, a short and truthful statement such as “Based in Nottingham; willing to relocate” is more informative than a misleading local address.
For fully remote vacancies, your location may still matter because of working arrangements or legal eligibility. Be honest about where you are based without publishing more detail than is needed. If a particular application form requires a full address, review why it is requested and how the employer says it will be handled rather than leaving a mandatory field blank without thought.
What about nationality, work eligibility and pronouns?
Nationality and the right to work are not the same issue. Employers may have lawful right-to-work checking responsibilities, but your CV does not generally need to display passport information or identity numbers. Follow the employer’s secure verification process when it reaches that stage. Never include a scan of your passport or National Insurance number inside a general CV.
Personal pronouns are optional; use them if you wish, not because a template requires them. Similarly, there is rarely a professional reason to specify marital status, number of children or religion. These are private matters and should not be presented as standard CV fields. Carefully check any automated template that inserts headings you did not choose.
Protect information when sharing your CV online
Consider where your CV will appear. An emailed application sent directly to a legitimate employer is different from a publicly searchable profile. Remove unnecessary information before uploading to a public portfolio or posting a sample online. Check whether the file contains personal comments, tracked changes, hidden text or metadata that you did not intend to share.
The Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on recruitment data explains the employer-side responsibilities for candidate information. For applicants, a sensible principle is still data minimisation: disclose what the real recruitment task needs, through the appropriate channel, at the appropriate time.
Review your contact block before applying
As a final check of personal details on CV drafts, read the advert and confirm whether a CV, application form or both are requested. Then check your name, contact details, location and external links. Remove duplicate or outdated fields. If your current template still asks for birth date, marital status or a photograph by default, consider deleting those fields unless there is a genuine reason to include them.
Good decisions about personal details on CV documents make a CV easier to use and reduce needless disclosure. When you’re ready to focus on the rest of the document, My Job Fixer’s Create My CV may help organise the content, subject to any account or plan requirements. You remain responsible for checking what the finished CV includes.