References on a resume: should you include them in 2026?

Leave them off. Not because a style rule says so, but because the software that reads your resume has no field to put them in, and the employer who wants them will ask you for them later, by name, through a different system entirely.

That is the whole answer. The rest of this post is the evidence - what two of the biggest applicant tracking systems publish about where reference data actually lives, what it costs you to spend five lines on a block nobody reads, and the one situation where references do belong on the page.

What an ATS does with the word "References"

Nothing. Greenhouse publishes exactly what its resume parsing extracts: "skills, job titles, years of experience, start/end dates of employment, company names from employment history," plus "where available, a derived industry classification associated with candidate's past employers." The same FAQ states the system "does not extract additional fields beyond" that list. Your referees' names, titles and phone numbers are not among them, and neither is the heading above them.

So picture an Administrative Assistant sending a two-page resume whose final third is three referees, each with a job title, a mobile number and an email address. Fifteen lines. In the recruiter's candidate record, those fifteen lines contribute one thing: nothing. They exist inside the attached file, visible only if a person opens the document and scrolls to the bottom of page two - which is the part of the document that gets read least.

There is a second cost, and it is the one people miss. Greenhouse names "complex resumes with tables, headers, and footers," "resumes that have a columned layout" and "resumes without clear sections and differing formats throughout" among the causes of an unsuccessful parse. A reference block is the single most common reason a resume grows a table, because three names with four fields each is a grid and people format grids as grids. The block that does nothing for you can break the extraction of the sections that would have.

Here is what the recruiter sees. An Administrative Assistant whose last section is a three-column reference grid, parsed:

Current title: Administrative Assistant References Office Manager Company: (blank) Skills: (blank)

The same resume with the block removed and a plain skills line in its place:

Current title: Administrative Assistant Company: (your employer, read cleanly from the experience section) Skills: Calendar management, Concur, Workday, Microsoft 365, vendor invoicing

Same person, same eleven years, same page count. One of those records comes back when a recruiter searches their database for "Concur"; the other does not exist as far as the search is concerned.

Where reference data actually lives in two major systems

Neither vendor describes references as something read out of an uploaded resume. Both treat them as a separate step with its own request.

	Greenhouse	Workday
Where references are handled	Third-party integrations only - every article under Reference check is a vendor: Crosschq, SkillSurvey, Xref, Zinc, Refapp, Clearspeed and others	A Reference Check subprocess inside the Job Application business process, separate from Background Check
What starts the request	Moving the candidate into the vendor's pipeline stage	Reaching the Reference Check step, which is optional and configurable
Who sets the number of references	The recruiter, in Request Settings - "the number/type of references you want to be associated with this request"	Not specified in the recruiting course manual
Taken from your uploaded resume	No - parsing covers skills, job titles, years of experience, employment dates and company names	Not described in the recruiting documentation

When does an employer actually ask for references?

Late, and by invitation. Workday's recruiting documentation lists the nine subprocesses a candidate can be routed through - Review Candidate, Screen, Assess Candidate, Interview, Reference Check, Offer, Employment Agreement, Background Check, Ready for Hire - and describes the relevant one plainly: the Reference Check subprocess "allows you to confirm the candidate's character, background, and experience by contacting personal and professional references."

Two of those nine are pinned in place. Workday states that "Review is the Initiation step, and Ready for Hire is the Completion step" - the application arrives at one end, the hire leaves at the other. Everything between them floats, because the same page adds: "there is no specified order of steps; you configure the Job Application business process step order." An employer can put reference checking before the interview if they want to. The documentation neither recommends an order nor reports what employers pick, so treat any confident claim about when the call comes - including this post's - as an inference from where the step sits, not a measurement.

The nine subprocesses of Workday's Job Application business process

Descriptions are Workday's own. Only the first and last are fixed - the middle seven are ordered by the employer, so read this as the menu, not the itinerary.

1. 1
   Review Candidate

   The Initiation step. Workday: "allows you to review a candidate's resume and decide if you want to move them to the next stage." This is the step your uploaded file is actually read at, if it is read.

2. 2
   Screen

   Workday: "occurs early in the recruiting process to filter out candidates that do not meet basic job criteria."

3. 3
   Assess Candidate

   Workday: "allows you to assign a status to aptitude metrics (e.g., skill tests), evaluate specific aptitude tests, evaluate an overall assessment."

4. 4
   Interview

   Workday: "allows you to conduct a meeting with the candidate to determine if you want to advance the candidate to the next stage."

5. 5
   Reference Check

   Workday: "allows you to confirm the candidate's character, background, and experience by contacting personal and professional references." This is where the question you prepared for finally arrives.

6. 6
   Offer

   Terms are extended. Workday notes it "can include steps to ensure designated individuals review the candidate's proposed compensation."

7. 7
   Employment Agreement

   Workday: "You can generate or attach employment agreements for candidates as a subprocess."

8. 8
   Background Check

   A separate step from Reference Check. Workday: "allows you to confirm the candidate's credit history, driving records, criminal records, security clearances, and other personal information."

9. 9
   Ready for Hire

   The Completion step. Workday: "the last step before you initiate a staffing business process."

Greenhouse tells the same story from a different angle. Every article in its Reference check documentation section is an integration with an outside vendor - Crosschq, SkillSurvey, Xref, Zinc, Refapp, RefNow, Veremark, Searchlight, Clearspeed and the rest. There is no native reference field described there at all. The Crosschq article spells out the mechanics: a recruiter configures the request, then "move your candidate to the Crosschq stage" to send it, and stage transition rules can fire that automatically. You receive an email. Your referee receives an email. At no point does anyone consult page two of your resume.

Read the purpose Workday states one more time: to confirm character, background and experience. Confirmation is a verb applied to a decision already made. Nobody builds a shortlist out of reference notes, which is why supplying referees at the application stage answers a question the employer has not asked and cannot act on yet. For an Administrative Assistant applying through a career site, the practical consequence is narrow and worth stating exactly: the details you provide up front are read by no one at the moment you send them, and are stale by the time anyone wants them - phone numbers change, managers leave, and the referee you chose in March is at a different employer in September.

Is a reference check the same as a background check?

No, and the difference decides how much warning you get. Workday runs them as two separate subprocesses with two separate descriptions: Reference Check confirms "character, background, and experience by contacting personal and professional references," while Background Check confirms "credit history, driving records, criminal records, security clearances, and other personal information." Different step, different vendor, different paperwork.

The paperwork is the part worth knowing. A background report bought from a company in the business of compiling background information is a consumer report, so the FTC's rules attach to it: stand-alone written notice, your written permission before it is pulled, and a copy of the report plus a summary of your rights before anything adverse is done with it. The EEOC states the other half of that bargain from your side - if you decline permission, the employer may reject your application. A recruiter picking up the phone to a former manager is not regulated that way.

So an Administrative Assistant applying to a school district can sign one disclosure form covering criminal history and never see a form about references at all. The consent you gave was for the report. The call to your old office manager happens on the strength of the phone number you supplied, and the only person who can warn her is you.

"References available upon request" - do I write that line?

No. It is a sentence that tells the reader something they already believed, on a document where every line is auditioning. If you have space at the bottom of the page, that space is worth more empty than filled with a promise nobody doubted.

What goes in the space instead

Whatever the skills extractor can see. For an Administrative Assistant, the block you just deleted is roughly five lines - enough for a plain skills line naming the systems you actually run, spelled the way employers spell them. O*NET lists the work in this occupation as answering telephones and routing callers, greeting visitors and handling inquiries, creating and maintaining databases, and using computers for applications such as database management or word processing. That is the raw material. "Calendar management across three executives, Concur expense reconciliation, Workday requisition entry, front-desk visitor intake" is the same experience written where Greenhouse's parser will index it as skills rather than store it as prose.

It is worth being honest about the limits of what any of this data proves. BLS and O*NET describe this occupation in detail - 3,515,600 people employed in 2025, and in May 2025 a median wage of $48,310 a year or $23.23 an hour, with the lowest tenth under $35,360 and the top tenth above $77,720 - and neither publishes a single figure about how often employers request references, at what stage, or how many they ask for. Nobody in the federal statistical system counts that. If you see a confident percentage about reference-checking rates, it did not come from a public source, and you should treat it accordingly.

Median annual wage for secretaries and administrative assistants by industry, May 2025

The spread across sectors is about $8,000. What you put in the skills line is closer to the sector you can move into than a reference block ever was.

Government (excl. state/local education and hospitals)		$54,250
Professional, scientific, and technical services		$54,080
Religious, grantmaking, civic, professional organizations		$49,390
Educational services (state, local, private)		$48,980
Healthcare and social assistance		$46,290

The industry gap matters more than usual in this occupation, because the entry bar is low and the movement between sectors is real: O*NET reports that 50% of respondents said a high school diploma or equivalent is required, 22% an associate's or other two-year degree, and 11% a bachelor's. When the credential is not the differentiator, the named systems are. BLS projects employment in the occupation to fall 2% between 2025 and 2035, a decline of 75,300 jobs - which is exactly the condition under which a resume that parses cleanly beats a resume that looks tidy.

The part that is about someone other than you

Here is a position you are free to disagree with: publishing a former manager's mobile number on a document you send to two hundred strangers is something you are doing to that person, not for yourself.

The asymmetry is visible in the rules. When an employer buys background information from a company in the business of compiling it, the FTC requires them to tell you that they might use it for employment decisions - a notice that must be "in writing and in a stand-alone format" - and to get your written permission before the report is pulled; before acting adversely on it they must hand you a copy of the report and a copy of "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act." The EEOC states the same permission rule from the applicant's side, and adds that an employer must treat you the same as anyone else when it asks about your background, "regardless of your race, national origin, color, sex, religion, disability, genetic information (including family medical history), or older age (40 or older)."

Your referee gets none of that machinery. There is no notice, no consent form and no summary of rights for the person whose direct line you attached to a PDF that will sit in eleven applicant databases. Asking them first is not a courtesy, it is the entire protection they have - and it is also self-interested, because a referee who is surprised by the call gives a worse reference than one who was expecting it.

The one real exception

Some application forms have required reference fields. Public-sector postings and a good share of hourly and administrative roles ask for names, titles, phone numbers and relationship, and mark the fields with an asterisk. That is not a reason to put references on the resume - it is a reason to have the details somewhere you can paste from. Fill the fields, leave the document alone.

Keep a separate one-page sheet and send it only when asked. One row per person:

Write the employer names on that sheet the way you write them on the resume - in full, with the legal suffix. Greenhouse lists "company names missing identifying words (Inc., Co., LTD, LLC)" and incomplete job titles such as "Sr. Account Exec" in place of the full title among the things that trip its parser. The reference sheet is not parsed, but the mismatch is what a reference-check survey catches: a referee is asked to confirm the employer and the dates, and a shortened company name on one document against the full legal name on the other is the kind of small discrepancy that turns a five-minute confirmation into a follow-up email.

That sheet is a document you control, updated once a year, sent to one employer at a time. It is also the only version of your references that should exist in writing anywhere.

What to do this week

1. Open your resume and delete the reference block, heading included. If deleting it leaves a table with one empty cell, delete the table too - Greenhouse names tables among the layouts that cause an unsuccessful parse.
2. Write the skills line that replaces it. Systems, tools and processes by their real names, in the vocabulary of the postings you are applying to.
3. Send three messages before you send another application. Ask each person you would name whether they are willing, confirm the number and email they want used, and tell them the kind of role you are applying for. Then build the sheet above and put it somewhere you can find it in thirty seconds.

The reference request, when it comes, will come as a form - a vendor's link with fields for name, relationship, email and phone, sent while you are mid-interview-loop and least able to go hunting. HeroApply fills those application fields from your resume, which is what the space you just cleared is actually for.