u/Quick_Yesterday540

small post but something I've been thinking about.

almost every resume template I've ever seen has "References available on request" at the bottom. it's just… there. like furniture. nobody questions it.

then a recruiter told me it was a waste of space. "everyone has references. I've never seen someone say 'no references available.' just take it off."

so I did. removed that line, used the space to add one more achievement bullet to my most recent role.

zero difference in how recruiters responded which is what I expected, but also confirmation that the line itself was doing nothing.

this obviously isn't groundbreaking. but it made me think about how many other things are on resumes purely out of convention rather than because they add any value.

other things I've removed that nobody has ever questioned or asked about:

• date of birth (no reason it should be there, and in a lot of places employers shouldn't even be asking)
• marital status (absolutely no reason this should be on a resume)
• a photo (carries unconscious bias risk and most ATS systems can't read images anyway)
• hobbies section (kept it only when it was genuinely interesting and relevant - removed the generic "reading, gym, traveling")
• the objective statement at the top ("seeking a challenging role where I can grow…" - said nothing, took up prime real estate)

every line you remove for being useless is a line you can replace with something that actually helps your case.

what's something you removed from your resume that you thought you needed but actually didn't?

Okay hear me out before you disagree.

Every CV guide tells you to open with a 3-4 line personal statement. Something like "A highly motivated and results-driven professional with 5 years of experience seeking to leverage my skills in a dynamic environment."

I rewrote about 12 of those lines for friends over the past year and every single one of them was some version of the above. Completely interchangeable. You could swap the name at the top and it would still make sense.

Here's what I think is actually happening.. recruiters here have read thousands of these openers. They've become invisible. The eye skips straight past it and goes looking for the job title and company from your last role.

I ran a small experiment on my own CV. Removed the personal statement entirely and replaced that space with a tight 2-line value proposition that was role-specific. Something like: "Backend engineer with 6 years building high-volume data pipelines in fintech. Cut processing time by 40% at my last role. Looking for senior IC or tech lead positions in London or remote."

Direct, specific, no fluff. My response rate from recruiters went up noticeably.The problem isn't that personal statements are bad in theory. It's that most of us write them to satisfy a convention rather than to actually say something. If yours has the words "motivated," "passionate," "dynamic," or "results-driven" in it, try deleting the whole thing and rewriting it as if you were describing yourself to a recruiter in a 20 second elevator ride.

What does yours say? Genuinely curious how many people have a personal statement they actually like.