This is a big question. You only get a few seconds for your CV to make an impact on the person reading it. Does including references improve your credibility, will it cause problems and does it not make a difference? 

In this article we'll unpack the reasons for and against and provide you with a recommendation. 

✔️Reasons for Including References

1. You're adding credibility to your CV. By including references you are showing that you're confident that others will talk about you in the same way that your CV does. Sometimes hiring managers may think a CV is embellished; by having references you are implying that it's not. 

You're adding credibility to your CV. By including references you are showing that you're confident that others will talk about you in the same way that your CV does...

2. You are also showing that you're prepared and serious about job applications. By including references, you will likely have asked those people to be your references already. The hiring manager will then likely think you are serious about moving jobs, rather than sending out speculative applications to test the market or see what the pay in the market is like.

3. You're giving the hiring team more information and saving them from having to ask you for this later. 

❌Reasons for not Including References

1. You can't guarantee the employer will not contact the reference until you say so. This may annoy the people who are acting as your references and may seem unprofessional. 

2. You are sharing personal details of people other than yourself. This likely should be done at a later stage of the application, rather than up front. 

?Another option from SpotlightCV

With SpotlightCV you can create a verified CV. You can write up your projects on our bespoke web app and then notify your references they're ready to review. They can then verify each one and you can then export your verified CV as a pdf to share with whomsoever you'd like. That way your references are just verifying each project once. There's an example here. This is a great way to standout from the crowd. 

?In conclusion

We'd recommend not sharing your references' details directly in your CV. Just because you're then sharing details across a large number of organisations. But we'd recommend giving some thought to creating a SpotlightCV instead - of course we'd say that :).