Photo, Age and Marital Status: What to Remove from Your Resume for US Jobs
The bridge from your LATAM resume to a remote or US-based role.
5 min read
You built your resume the way you were taught back home —with a photo, your age, your marital status— and it works fine for local jobs. But when you apply to a US company or a remote role that runs its ATS, those same details can work against you.
This is not about looks. The US has anti-discrimination laws (the EEOC) that push recruiters to avoid any detail that could bias a hiring decision. Many companies —and several ATS platforms— will drop or penalize a resume with a photo as a matter of policy.
Below we lay out clearly what to remove, what to keep and why. The goal is simple: let your experience speak for itself and let the ATS read your resume without noise.
Why a LATAM resume and a US resume are not the same document
In Mexico and much of LATAM it is normal —even expected— to include a photo, date of birth, marital status and sometimes a national ID. It is an inherited cultural convention, and for the local market it does not hurt you.
In the US the logic is the opposite. A recruiter who sees your age, your gender in a photo or your marital status is exposed to a bias or discrimination claim. That is why the standard practice is for that kind of detail to simply not appear. Leaving it out does not make you look less professional —it makes you look aligned with how hiring works there.
Understanding this difference is the first step of the bridge: you are not removing information because it is wrong, but because the country changes and so do the rules.
What to REMOVE from your resume and why
These items are normal on a local CV, but for the US you should take them out entirely:
- Photo —the number one reason an ATS or recruiter may drop your resume under a diversity policy.
- Date of birth or age —protected under age-discrimination law.
- Marital status —irrelevant to the job and a potential source of bias.
- Nationality —leave it off; work authorization, if relevant, is handled separately.
- National tax or ID numbers (CURP, RFC, SSN equivalents) —meaningless to a US employer and a needless exposure of sensitive data.
- Full street address —keep only city, country and time zone; the street and ZIP add nothing and cost you privacy.
- Religion and explicit gender —out; these are protected categories.
- Number of dependents or children —irrelevant and biasing.
- Signature —not used on a US resume.
What to KEEP and how to present it
Removing does not mean emptying your resume. Here is what should stay, presented the US way:
- Full name, clear and prominent.
- Professional email —ideally first.last; no nicknames.
- Phone with country code (+52) so they can reach you from abroad.
- LinkedIn, GitHub or portfolio —links that back up your experience.
- City, country and time zone —key for remote roles, since it signals your working-hours overlap.
- A 2-to-3-line professional summary focused on the role.
- Experience with metrics —achievements with numbers, not just duties.
- Skills relevant to the job, aligned to its keywords.
- Education —no GPA, unless you are a recent graduate with a standout record.
How a cleaner resume also lifts your ATS score
Stripping out all that noise does more than avoid bias: it lets the ATS parse your resume far better. A photo, tables around your details or unnecessary fields confuse the system and cause your information to be misread or lost.
The ideal is a single-column format, no images or text boxes, with standard headings. That way the ATS pulls your name, contact and experience without errors, and your score rises because the system finds what it is looking for.
Fewer personal details and a clean format push in the same direction: getting your resume past the automated filter and in front of human eyes.
What about applying to Europe?
On this point Europe looks more like the US than like LATAM, with some nuances. Several countries discourage the photo and personal data for the same non-discrimination reasons.
There are exceptions: in Germany, for instance, including a photo is still common and even expected. Even so, if you want a single resume that works across the most markets, the version without a photo and without personal data is the safest bet.
Our default recommendation is the clean, photo-free version: it maximizes your compatibility with the US, with the ATS and with most of Europe, and you only adapt it if a specific country asks for more.