Should you put references on your resume?

The case for writing it

The strongest reason is privacy. Your referees' contact details are their personal information rather than yours to hand around, and Fair Work's workplace privacy guide treats references as personal information under the Privacy Act. If you write the line instead of the names, those details only move when an employer actually asks for them, at the point in the process where your referees are expecting a call.

It also follows the official guidance. The Australian Government's resume guidance calls writing the line "totally acceptable", and career experts told the ABC in May 2026 they'd rather you write it than list referee details, since a referee doesn't want an unsolicited call they're not prepared for.

And it costs you very little. One sentence at the bottom takes up less room than a referees section full of names, and it leaves you free to supply those names as soon as an application asks for them.

The case against writing it

The main argument against the line is that it answers a question nobody has asked. Recruiters assume referees exist and know to request them near the end, so the sentence tells them nothing they weren't already taking for granted. On a resume of one or two pages, that makes it padding.

A second argument is about how the line can be read. Some recruiters take it as a sign that referees aren't lined up yet, which isn't a fair reading, and you're not in the room to explain. That risk, small as it is, is where the advice to drop the phrase comes from.

The phrase is also a leftover from the era when resumes carried a full referees section at the bottom of the page. Referees are now handled on a separate sheet, handed over when they're asked for, so the line is no longer standing in for anything. If the sheet is ready, printing the line adds little.

So should you write it?

Keep referee names and contact details off the resume itself at application stage. The line about references being available is a separate question, and it's safe either way. Treat it as a privacy signal: worth keeping if you're applying broadly and would rather referee details didn't circulate with every application, and easy to drop if you'd rather every line of the resume carried evidence of your work.

One thing overrides the choice. When the job ad or the application form asks for referee details, give them, line or no line. An explicit request for referees isn't the place for placeholder text.

The scale of the decision is worth keeping in view, because employers who run referee checks run them late. Fair Work's own recruitment process lists referee checks after the interview and before the offer. No Australian law requires referees on a resume, and OAIC's referee report guidance says an agency should tell you before contacting a referee you didn't nominate. The line will not win you an interview, and it won't cost you one.

Who should your referees be?

Most employers ask for two. The referees who carry the most weight are the people who watched you do the job:

• Your current manager, if they know you're looking.
• A recent manager or supervisor from your last role.
• A senior colleague or client who saw your work up close.
• A teacher, a coach or a volunteer coordinator, when you don't have work referees yet.

Family and friends aren't useful here, because a referee is there to speak to your work and a relative's praise reads as bias. Character referees like the ones in the last bullet are reasonable stand-ins until you have work referees to offer, which matters most early in your career or after a gap.

If you're job hunting without your current employer knowing, leave your current manager off the list. Choose referees you can approach without word getting back, and if a recruiter asks why your current manager isn't there, you can say plainly that you'd rather your employer didn't know you're looking yet. It's a common situation and an honest answer reads fine.

The rest of the resume still has to earn the interview before referees come into it at all. Skills to put on a resume that actually match the job covers the section that does most of that work.

Ask first, then brief them

Ask a referee before their name goes anywhere. Their contact details are their personal information, and someone approached out of the blue to vouch for you, for a job they know nothing about, isn't in much of a position to help. Ask permission, check that the details you have are current, then pass them on.

Once they've agreed, brief them. Tell them the role, the company and the two or three strengths you'd like them to mention, so they can give a fuller answer than a referee who hears about the job for the first time from the employer. How to ask someone to be your referee has more messages to copy, including what to say if your current manager doesn't know you're looking.

A referee list you can copy

When a request for referees arrives, hand over a clean list on its own page, formatted to match your resume and prepared before you need it. The free resume template on this site deliberately leaves referees off the resume itself, so this list is where they belong.

Ask two people now, brief them, and keep this page ready. The day the request lands you can send it in five minutes, rather than chasing up people you haven't spoken to in a year.