Does age bias exist? Absolutely. Does that mean you should omit information that would help them decipher the length of your career history? Not really. Here's why.
- Omitting dates forces the reader to come to their own conclusion. Let's say you are a job seeker in your late 40s and you decide to only report your career chronology back to 1998, when the reality is you've been in the workforce since the mid '80s. In addition you don't include your graduation date. The person reading your resume will come to one of two conclusions: a) you are in your 30s and just didn't include your graduation date (unlikely) or b) you are significantly older than your resume suggests and you have omitted the graduation date or early career experiences to mask this fact (likely). So now you have called more attention to the very thing you are trying to hide and potentially given the hiring manager the impression that you are much older than you actually are.
Strategies to use
So how do you work around the age factor?
- Be transparent but be strategic. Create a very brief section on the resume that says Early Experience or Additional Experience. Include one or two sentences that explains your early chronology. For example, you might write something like "held a series of customer service positions for companies X, Y, and Z between these dates." Or you might write "10 years experience in retail sales." With this strategy you are being transparent, but you aren't calling a great deal of attention to your earlier history or dedicating too much space on the resume to these experiences.
Gaining job interviews is really about gaining trust. The resume is frequently the tool that is used to gain that trust. By showing the reader that you have the competencies and past successes that make you a strong fit for their open position, you increase the trust and "likability" factor and improve the chances of getting called in for an interview. If you omit key information about your background, it is unlikely that you will make it to the second round of interviews.
If the hiring authority truly has an age bias, there may be little you can do to change their way of thinking. Perhaps that's unfortunate, but it is also the reality. If you are concerned that age bias may be a factor in your search, consider targeting companies that tout themselves as best places to work for older workers. Check out AARP's annual surveys on these companies and start building relationships with companies who brand themselves as great places to work for people over 50 rather than chasing after companies that don't embrace this demographic.
