CVSharkAustralian resumes end with a referees section. That much is genuinely different from the American advice that fills most search results, where the convention has been to leave references off entirely for years.
What is far less settled, and where the advice you will find here openly contradicts itself, is what that section should actually contain.
The answer, before the reasoning
Write one line: Referees available on request.Keep your referees’ names and contact details off the document you attach to an application, and have them ready in a separate file to send the moment they are asked for.
If a job ad explicitly asks for referee details in the resume, which happens in government and some healthcare recruitment, follow the ad. An instruction in the ad always beats a general convention, and ignoring a stated requirement is a much more certain way to be screened out than any formatting choice.
Why the advice you are reading disagrees with itself
Search this question and you will find pages telling you to list two or three referees with their job titles, phone numbers and email addresses, and pages telling you to write the single line above. Both are stated confidently. Both appear on sites that look equally authoritative.
The disagreement is real, and it is not simply that one side is lazy. The case for listing details in full is that it removes friction: a recruiter who wants to move fast can, and Australian recruiters do check references properly rather than treating it as a formality. That is a genuine argument and it is why the practice persists.
It is outweighed by what happens to your resume after you send it, which is the part the advice usually leaves out.
What you are actually handing over
Your resume does not go to a person. It goes into a recruitment database, where it is parsed, stored, searched, and often kept long after the role is filled. A single application can be visible to everyone at an agency. Put three phone numbers on it and you have entered three other people into that system, permanently, without them being present for the decision.
Those are other people’s personal details, and under the Australian Privacy Principles they are exactly the kind of information that is meant to be collected with care and a reason. You are not the one with the legal obligation here, and this is not a warning that you are breaking a rule. It is a reason to notice that the casual version of this asks a favour of your referees that they never got to consider.
The practical version of the same point: your former manager did not agree to be phoned about a job you did not get, by an agency they have never heard of, four months from now.
The second reason, which is about you
Holding the details back gives you a step you would otherwise lose. When a referee is requested, you know a real conversation is happening, and you get to ring the person first.
That call is worth more than most resume advice. Two minutes to say which role it is, what the ad emphasised, and which piece of work is worth mentioning, and your referee gives a specific, relevant answer instead of a warm but generic one. A referee who has been briefed sounds like someone who remembers you clearly. A referee ambushed by a call about a job they knew nothing about sounds vague, and vague is not neutral.
Listing the numbers on the resume gives that step away for a convenience that benefits the employer rather than you.
Do not delete the section
This is the mistake that follows from reading American advice, and it is worse than either version of the disagreement above. In the United States the standard guidance is to omit references entirely, because the line is considered filler there.
Here it is not filler. It is the expected close of the document, and its absence is a small signal that the resume was written to a different market. That signal costs you nothing on its own, and it is one of several that accumulate, alongside a street address, a photo, or American spelling. None of them individually explains a rejection. Together they say this document was not written for here.
Who to ask, and what to have ready
Keep a separate one-page document with two or three referees on it, and send that when it is asked for. For each one, include their name, their role and organisation, how they know you, and the best way to reach them.
- Ask permission first, every time. Not once, years ago. Before this application, so they are not surprised and so you find out now if they have moved on or would rather not.
- A direct manager beats a senior title. Someone who supervised your work can describe it. A general manager who knows your name cannot, and the call will show it.
- Not family, not friends. If your work history is thin, a lecturer, a placement supervisor, a volunteer coordinator or a client are all real and all better.
- Check they are contactable. A referee at an old email address is worse than no referee, because the silence looks like it belongs to you.
If your last employer will not give a reference
Common, and not the disaster it feels like. Plenty of Australian organisations have a policy of confirming dates and job title only, which is a policy about legal risk and not a comment on you.
Go sideways rather than up: a team lead, a colleague who is now elsewhere, a client, a contractor you managed. If you are asked, say plainly that your former employer confirms employment only as a matter of policy. It is a normal answer and it is far better than a gap where a referee should be.
Worth knowing separately: an employer is not obliged to provide a reference at all in Australia, and what they can and cannot do around the end of employment is set out by the Fair Work Ombudsman.
The short version
Keep the section, because Australian resumes have one. Write Referees available on request rather than three phone numbers, because the details are not yours to publish into a database and holding them back buys you the briefing call. Unless the ad asks otherwise, in which case do what the ad says.
The referees section is one of the Australian conventions CVShark checks for, and one it will not strip when it tailors your resume. The rest of them are in the guide to the Australian resume format. Free, no account.