Ageism is illegal, but it still exists in the process of reviewing resumes. As a 50-year-old who has worked in the same position for 20 years, how can I avoid giving away my age on my resume?
1. Start With a Competencies List
Before knowing about your age or experience, try to attract the recruiter. Tell him about your ability, at the top part of your resume, below the contract. Write a summary of your knowledge or summary of giving the reasons to hire you. Do make a list of your qualities related to the job and immediately show them to the recruiter. For instance, if you work for HR, you might break out your specialty skills such as payroll, recruiting, benefits, etc. Do not list highlights because your abilities recommend Ladders, such as that you are loyal and reliable.
2. Keep It Current
When you want to complete your resumes for 20 years of experience, update the documents. Don’t write worthless things! You might be proud of your 20 years of achievements but just focus on your recent accomplishments. Your résumé should be only related to the past 10 to 15 years. The worst thing is that to show you have weakened after a great start. Nobody likes to employ someone who is near the end of his life. Add any software or hardware you have learned, any conference or a workshop you’ve attended, and any certification you’ve got to show you are updated in your job.
3. Diversify Your Experience
Working for the same employer does not show you have worked in the same position. It will be perfect for your résumé. Categorize your job into different roles and post you have had for a decade or so. List the positions as though they are other jobs, although the employer is the same. It indicates that you were active in your career. It’ll give more information to the recruiter about your abilities.
4. After All, it’s a Marketing Tool.
Although it might be mentioned in your history, your résumé should not be a biography or historical document. Do not mention the past 20 years. Create a marketing tool. Your résumé must look like an advertisement to sell you. It must answer questions such as why they should hire you over someone else. What you will bring and what your achievements are. Make it in a way that the recruiter wants you without paying attention to your age or employment history.
Most times, you don’t need to include your age on your resume. It was more common and expected to write about your personal information, like date or place of birth long ago. But those days are gone, and now, you can easily remove your date of birth from your resume.
There’s no sneaky way about it. Also, to help your resume seem charming and exciting, you should use recent language and seriously avoid outdated words and sentences. There’s not much more you can do on your resume to prevent ageism because eventually, they’re going to see you, no matter how you write your resume.
I know what you’re saying, but unfortunately, that’s the way things are these days. I had a similar problem with the age and the resume. One thing I did was remove any dates from my education. I included my two university degrees and other certifications, but none had dates. I had five different positions at my previous company over 18 years, so I listed each position’s job title and description separately to demonstrate that I wasn’t stagnating in a single position even though I was at one company. Instead, I was constantly learning and growing, expanding my responsibilities throughout that time. Without any further information, recruiting managers believed I had started my career straight out of graduate school and had been in the industry for roughly 20 years overall, putting me in my late 30s, which was fine with me. When my supervisor met my then-22-year-old son a few months after starting my new job, he was surprised.
Sadly, age discrimination happens to so many job seekers out there. You can be discriminated against for being “too old” or “too young” in their minds. Age-proofing your resume or CV is something that’s meant to help fight age discrimination. The same goes for those who are concerned about being judged overqualified. And no, it’s not unethical or dishonest. That is if you aren’t really lying!
For example, if you have worked for a place for 12 years. You’re concerned that you’ll be considered overqualified because you have way more experience than others. So you adjust the employment dates to just show seven years of employment. Are you lying? Well, as long as you actually did work there during that time, no, you aren’t lying. So with a resume or CV, there’s flexibility built into work through overqualified and age discrimination. And if your college or university degree goes back to a long time ago, and you’re worried that if you included the graduation year, you’d be considered “too old,” you can leave the year of graduation off your resume or CV to age proof it. Are you being unethical or dishonest? The answer is no! IF you really do have the degree from that school, you don’t have to list dates unless you want to.