4 Outdated Resume Lines to Delete in 2026
Four lines still show up on resumes every week that quietly mark the candidate as out of touch. Delete them. The whole edit takes five minutes.
Monster's 2026 State of Resumes Report found that 57% of candidates still list a full street address, and 49% still include "References available upon request." Neither line does any work for you. Both signal that you learned your resume rules from a source that hasn't been updated in a decade.
Key Takeaways
- Full street address is a privacy risk with no upside. City and state is enough.
- Objective statements got replaced by summary and headline fifteen years ago.
- "References available upon request" is a line that means "I am padding."
- A non-professional email address can cost you a callback before the resume is read.
1. Full street address
"123 Maple Lane, Apt 4B, Springfield, IL 62704" is a security hand-grenade. It goes through an ATS, lands in a third-party recruiter database, and gets shared across companies you never applied to. Recruiters do not need your apartment number. They need to know if you are local, remote, or willing to relocate.
Replace with: "City, State" or "City, State (Open to Remote)."
2. "Objective: To obtain a position where I can..."
The objective statement is a 1990s convention replaced by the professional summary and headline a decade ago. Objectives are written for you. Summaries are written for the hiring manager. The difference matters.
Replace with: a two-line summary that names the role, the scope, and one concrete outcome. Or just a headline: "Product Manager | 4 SaaS Launches | B2B Fintech."
3. "References available upon request"
Every recruiter already knows they can request references. Writing it on your resume does nothing except eat a line. In a document where you are fighting for every inch of the first page, giving up a line to state the obvious is a net negative.
Replace with: delete. Use the line for a bullet that actually describes your work.
4. A non-professional email address
hotpartygirl2009@hotmail.com. xXshadowfangXx@aol.com. The address you made when you were fourteen. Recruiters see it, and whatever unconscious bias you hoped to avoid arrives instantly anyway. Get a clean firstname.lastname-style address and forward the old one if you have to.
Replace with: a Gmail or domain-based address using your real name. First initial plus last name works if the clean version is taken.
The point
Five minutes of cuts. No rewrite required. The lines that should be there, summary, headline, work experience, skills, education, certifications, are the only ones that need to be there. Everything else is taking space from something better you could put in its place.
Gate Crashers rebuilds every resume from scratch using the 2026 format defaults. See it at gatecrashers.ai/pricing.