Why is “references upon request” so common in resumes?
A lot of people seem to be assuming that the alternative to putting “References available on request” is listing the references, which it isn’t. The alternative is assuming that if you need to provide references, you’ll be asked, and you won’t be asked until after an interview. I doubt anyone in HR is sitting around circular-filing resumes that don’t explicitly mention having references. Unless you’re in high school and work at Subway and call everyone’s references before the manager gets the resume, barraging them with questions about how to get a fox, a chicken and a bag of feed across a river in a boat, the accomplishments of Lyndon B. Johnson and some minutae about vampires. The line “you can tell a lot about a potential employee by how intelligent their friends are” really opens doors.
