The Resume Location Line Score, Six Dimensions to One Header per Posting

This guide is for anyone sending one resume to three kinds of posting at once: jobs in their own metro, jobs in cities they would move to, and remote roles open only in certain states. For each posting it scores six dimensions against your real address, move date, and work authorization, and gives you one header location line from a fixed set of five. It also gives you the matching values for the application form's location field and your profile's relocation settings, so all three agree when a recruiter filters or a background check runs.

Where recruiters and screeners read your location

Your location gets read in four places, and the resume header is only one of them. Recruiter search reads your profile, the applicant tracking system reads the application form, a person reads your header, and a background check reads your address history. The posting's work format decides which of these actually filters you, so the header line has to be chosen per posting rather than fixed once.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software an employer uses to receive, store, and filter applications. What it does with your location is less documented than most resume advice suggests:

• Greenhouse's public support pages do not publish a parser field specification. Third-party guides say its parser reads name, email, phone, and location first, and that its talent filtering can search the full resume text and internal notes and then filter by location. Treat both claims as secondhand.
• A secondary page reports that Greenhouse cannot parse resumes larger than 2.5 MB. If your file is over that size, the header line may never be read as data at all.
• For Greenhouse, Workday, Lever, and iCIMS, the public sources do not establish two things: whether the stored location comes from the resume or from the application form, and whether these systems support radius search on ZIP-level data.

My working rule follows from those gaps. Treat the form field as the ATS's location of record and the header as the location of record for the person reading. You can check this yourself: if the employer's portal shows you a candidate profile after you apply, look at which location it stored.

How recruiter search tools filter on location

LinkedIn Recruiter applies an implied 100-mile radius to any location a recruiter selects. It ignores location completely when the Workplace Type filter is set to Remote, and for Hybrid it widens results to anyone open to relocating to the state or country. Indeed Smart Sourcing filters by city, state, or ZIP with a radius setting and a willingness-to-relocate filter, but it does not publish its default radius.

Three more details shape your settings:

• Postal code narrowing. A LinkedIn recruiter can tighten the 100-mile default with a postal code filter. If your profile city is vague, a tight radius drops you.
• Open to Work limits. LinkedIn's Open to Work feature caps onsite locations at 5, and only recruiters with a Recruiter or Recruiter Lite licence can see them. Five slots means choosing your target metros, not listing every city you would consider.
• Why recruiters use the filter. A LinkedIn tip sheet tells recruiters that open candidates are twice as likely to respond to an InMail, which gives them a reason to filter for people who are open.

The six dimensions and how to score each

Score each posting on six dimensions: work format, state-list match, distance band, move status, work authorization, and time-zone overlap. Two of them, state list and authorization, are gates. A Stop on either one ends the application or changes your form answers, and no header line repairs it.

Work format

The format score tells you how much weight the header carries in search. At 2 (onsite), the profile city, the form field, and the header all count. At 1 (hybrid), LinkedIn's search matches anyone open to relocating to the state, so your Open to Work setting does most of the work. At 0 (remote), location is not used in LinkedIn search and the header line speaks only to a person. One trap: Greenhouse will not save a remote job post without a valid location, even with remote enabled. That means a city printed on a remote posting may be a placeholder rather than an office you would have to commute to.

State list

A state list is a line in a remote posting that limits applicants to named states. It exists because an employer must register with the tax authorities of every state where it has an employee, so the list reflects where the employer has payroll set up, not what it would prefer. Score Pass if your state is listed, None if there is no list, and Stop if there is a list and your state is not on it.

This comes from one small snapshot. A large-scale share of state-restricted remote postings has not been published, so read every posting's full text and its application form questions rather than assuming either way.

Distance band

Measure from your real address to the office metro. Score 2 if you live inside the metro, 1 if you are outside the metro but within 100 miles (LinkedIn returns you in that case), and 0 if you are beyond 100 miles. Straight-line distance can understate the real commute, and the commute is what the reader judges.

Move status

Score 2 only if you can name the month and show a document: a signed lease, an offer, or a transfer letter. Everything else scores 0, including a month you have chosen but cannot evidence. This is the dimension people inflate most.

Authorization and time-zone overlap

Authorization is a gate. If you would need sponsorship for this posting, no location line changes that, so answer the form honestly and decide whether to apply at all. Time-zone overlap applies only to remote postings: 2 if your normal hours match the team's, 1 if they partly overlap, 0 if they barely overlap. A 0 does not change the line, but it means you should state the hours you will work before anyone asks.

Which header line each score produces

Apply the gates first, then work format, then distance and move status. A remote posting that passes the state check gets the remote line with your time zone. Onsite or hybrid within range gets the local metro line. Beyond 100 miles with a documented date gets the dated relocating line. Undated intent gets the dual-city line, and omitting the line is a deliberate choice, not a default.

Decision order:

1. State list or authorization is Stop: skip the posting, or answer the form plainly. No line helps.
2. Work format is Remote (0): use the remote line with your time zone.
3. Onsite or hybrid, distance 2 or 1: use the local metro line, naming your real town if you live outside the named metro.
4. Distance 0, move status 2: use the dated relocating line.
5. Distance 0, move status 0, and you would really move: use the dual-city line. For hybrid, also add the target state's metro to Open to Work.
6. Distance 0, move status 0, and you would not move: skip the posting.

The sources disagree on the relocating case. The Muse, quoting the recruiter Liou, recommends the target city plus "Relocating to". Resume Now says to mention relocation only for an immediate move. Resume Worded says to list the city you are moving to. I resolve the disagreement with the move-status score: the target city leads only when a document backs the date.

What relocating job seekers actually write

"Relocating to" is the most common self-label. In Refolk's index of professional profiles it appears in more than twice as many US headlines as "open to relocation":

These counts show how common the phrase is, not whether it works. Keyword matches are noisy. The index matches included "Chief Relocation Officer" and "Early Retirement & Relocation to France", so treat every count here as an upper bound. What the counts do tell you is that recruiters see "Relocating to" often and will read it as a claim that you are moving. That is exactly why it needs a date.

Local metro:            Denver, CO
Dated relocating:       Relocating to Boston, MA (Month Year)
Dual-city:              Seattle, WA | Open to relocating to Boston, MA
Remote with time zone:  Austin, TX | Remote (Central Time)
Omit:                   [no location line; your city stays on the form and the profile]

What the distance evidence shows and where it stops

Two field experiments found that callbacks fall as the applicant's distance or commute grows. Phillips measured about 1.1 percentage points per mile for low-wage jobs in Washington, DC. A Swedish study found about 12 points fewer callbacks for commutes over 90 minutes than for commutes under 60. Neither study tested professional roles or out-of-state applicants, so use them for direction, not for the size of the effect.

A percentage point (pp) is the plain difference between two rates. A drop from 20% to 18% is 2 pp.

Phillips sent 2,260 resumes and controlled for how affluent each neighborhood was. Distance mattered and affluence did not. That is the evidence behind naming the metro you live in rather than a small suburb that reads as farther away, and it is also why a long-commute address should not be dressed up to look closer.

On ZIP codes, the sources pull in opposite directions. The per-mile penalty argues against showing a ZIP far from the office. The recruiter The Muse quotes says recruiters often search by ZIP code, and both LinkedIn's postal code filter and Indeed's ZIP filter exist. My resolution is to leave the ZIP out of the header and give your exact ZIP on the application form, where the tracking system stores it and where a later check expects to find it.

Scoring one posting, step by step

The procedure takes about ten minutes for the first posting and about five for each one after that, because your own facts are fixed once. It ends when the header, the form field, and the profile settings all agree.

Keep the score card with the application so you can defend the line weeks later, when a recruiter calls and asks when you can start in Boston.

Posting:
Office metro:
Work format (Onsite 2 / Hybrid 1 / Remote 0):
State list (Pass / Stop / None):
Distance band (2 in metro / 1 under 100 mi / 0 beyond):
Move status (2 documented, month: ____ / 0 undated):
Authorization (Pass / Stop):
Time-zone overlap (2 full / 1 partial / 0 little):
Header line chosen:
Form location field entered:
Profile city and Open to Work metros:
All three agree (Y/N):

The friction in this step is version control. Five header lines across a dozen live applications means a dozen near-identical files, and the wrong one eventually goes out. Refolk tailors the resume to each posting it is given, so the header line can follow that posting's score card instead of living in a folder of copies.

How the location line goes wrong

Most location mistakes come from assuming a search reads a value it ignores, or from letting the header, the form, and the profile drift apart. Each failure below has a false positive, meaning a line that looks right and still misleads, and a check that catches it.

1. Assuming the Remote filter reads your location. On LinkedIn, Remote ignores location, so a remote-with-time-zone line does nothing in that search. False positive: you polish the line and believe it improves your reach. Check: eligibility depends on the posting's state list, so read the list.
2. Treating hybrid like onsite. Hybrid search matches anyone open to relocating to the state, so for that search the profile setting matters more than a dated relocating line. False positive: a perfect header with no target metro in Open to Work. Check: Open to Work lists a metro in that state.
3. Writing an undated "Relocating to". Resume Now advises against it unless the move is immediate. False positive: the recruiter assumes you are local and books an onsite interview for next week. Check: you can name the month and show a lease or an offer.
4. The "Current" filter catching a remote past job. LinkedIn counts an employer's operating location as current, so a remote role at a New York firm can put you in "current New York" results. False positive: recruiters there contact you expecting a local candidate. Check: your profile location states where you actually live.
5. Headline keyword noise. Profile counts matched on "relocation" include titles like "Chief Relocation Officer". False positive: a count that overstates how many people are actually moving. Check: treat keyword counts as upper bounds.
6. A country-only location. Showing only "United States" fails any 100-mile metro search. False positive: you feel open to everything and appear in nothing. Check: the profile location names a city.
7. Header, form, and background check disagreeing. A target city in the header with your real address on the form can look inconsistent, even though no published threshold calls it misrepresentation. False positive: a header that wins the screen and loses the check. Check: the header says "Relocating to X (Month Year)" and the form carries your real address.
8. Hiding a ZIP or a suburb. The per-mile penalty argues against a far ZIP, but a recruiter quoted by The Muse says recruiters often search by ZIP. False positive: a line that reads closer and drops out of a ZIP search. Check: the exact ZIP is on the form even when the header shows only the metro.

If your state is not on the posting's list, no header line fixes it.

Keeping the header, form, and profile in agreement

The three values you control have to tell one story. The header carries the target city and move month, or your real city. The form carries your real address. The profile carries the city where you live and lists your target metros in Open to Work. A background check then compares your address history against the form, not against the header.

What a background check compares

Screening providers define a discrepancy as any inconsistency between what a candidate provides and what the check reveals. Dates, titles, and employers are the common cases, and address mismatches come up as an identity-matching issue that accurate records such as utility bills or rental agreements resolve. One screening vendor says an address history search usually covers 7 years. No published guidance says whether a header city that differs from your address history counts as misrepresentation, so I treat it as unsettled and keep the form truthful. Under the FCRA, an employer must give you a copy of the report and a notice of your rights before taking adverse action, so you will see any mismatch before it costs you the job.

Experience entries are a second location signal

LinkedIn's "Current" definition means your employers' locations can act as a location signal alongside your profile city. For resume experience entries, a secondary page reports that Indeed's career guide recommends writing "Remote" in place of a city. A former recruiter argues the opposite: a bare "Remote" raised the same mental flag as an unexplained employment gap, so that recruiter uses "Remote (City, State)". I use the second pattern because it costs nothing and answers the question before it is asked. Whether ATS location search reads experience-entry locations at all has not been established.

A third copy of your location appears whenever you write a cover letter for a relocating application. Refolk drafts the cover letter from the same history it uses for the tailored resume, so the city and month in the letter can match the header rather than becoming a fourth version of the story.

Keeping the standard current

The platform behaviour in this guide can change, and the stable thing to know is the mechanism, not the numbers. Each quarter, re-read LinkedIn Recruiter's help article on location search and confirm the radius, the "Current" definition, and the Remote and Hybrid behaviour. Check whether Indeed has published its default radius. Re-check your Open to Work cap when you edit it. When a move date changes, update the header, the form answers on open applications where the portal allows it, and Open to Work on the same day.