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Our aging population means there are less young people entering the workforce every year, but despite this many employers still appear to have a conscious or subconscious bias towards hiring people over 50.
Seniors are seen as unwilling to embrace new technologies, too expensive to hire and not worth training due to imminent retirement and they often don’t even make it to the interview stage if their age is discernible from their application.
With that in mind, this article highlights some best practice resume writing tips along with some useful advice for seniors on how to avoid discrimination by age-proofing their resumes.
What every resume should include
Every job applicant needs to adhere to a few basic rules regardless of age to ensure their resume gets them to the interview stage. These rules include;
- Brevity – because recruiters have hundreds of applications to review, yours needs to be as short, punchy and straight to the point as possible. List your strong points upfront and provide a short summary of your potential value to the company, so your resume will hopefully stand out from the rest and you’ll make it to the short list.
- Uniqueness – the days of using the same resume for every job application are long gone. To have any chance of catching a recruiter’s eye these days, you will need to tailor your resume to the particular job you are applying for, highlighting any relevant experience you have and describing what you would be able to bring to the table if you were hired.
- Visibility – as well as applying for individual jobs, make sure you have a job seeker’s profile posted on sites where recruiters are likely to look for potential candidates including LinkedIn, Seek, Indeed and Monster. You should also network at every opportunity, as the majority of jobs are filled without being advertised.
- Clarity – make sure your resume is free of spelling and punctuation errors, well formatted and presented in an easy to read font. And send a copy to yourself, so you can be confident it will display correctly on all devices including mobile phones (a PDF is usually the safest bet).
- Relevance – as many recruiters now use software to filter job applicants (Applicant Tracking Systems), be sure to use keywords that an ATS would be likely to scan for, such as the skills you have and the technologies you are conversant with.
- Measurability – wherever possible, provide quantifiable evidence of your past accomplishments (i.e. I increased productivity by 38%), as these are results recruiters are more likely to remember.
Special considerations for over 50s
Close to 1 in 4 over 50s surveyed in Australian Seniors Series; Ageing in the Workforce 2021 believe they have been turned down for a job based solely on their age.’
Sadly, over 50s need even more in their bag of tricks to get their resume past ageist recruiters and HR personnel. Some useful age-proofing techniques can include;
- Not including dates – there is no legal obligation for you to include your date of birth, your age or the dates of your previous education or employment in a job application … so don’t.
- Focusing on experience – you are probably going to be outgunned by younger applicants in terms of relevant academic qualifications, so focus instead on the extensive experience you have in your field (without mentioning how many years).
- Staying up to date – if you’re returning to the workforce after being semi-retired, make sure you bring yourself up to speed with all the changes and advances that may have taken place in your industry. Employers will look more favourably on someone who has taken the trouble to keep their finger on the pulse and can hit the ground running.
- Being tech-savvy – one of the biggest myths about older employees is that they are distrustful of new technology and therefore difficult to train. To counter this, demonstrate your tech-savvy abilities by listing in your resume the current technologies you are conversant with and demonstrating your online engagement by including links to email, Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Seeking advice – ideally, you should have a younger person read your resume to give you insights into how you can ‘modernize’ it. You may be unconsciously showing your age through the layout or language and younger eyes may be able to identify areas that would benefit from updating.
Unfortunately, the negative perceptions surrounding older employees aren’t going to disappear overnight. But as mature-age workers become more sought after in an under-manned workforce of the future, employers will hopefully begin to realize that age equates to a wealth of knowledge and experience and should be treated as an asset rather than a flaw.
In the meantime, these tips will hopefully help you land the job you’re after or at least get you to the interview stage without being discriminated against.