Ageism in hiring is a fact and it works both ways. You can be too old or too young and you won’t know which way the potential employer is leaning but here are some quick things you can fix to minimize the impact on your resume. This is my favorite rant!
If you’re still putting your home address up at the top with your name and phone, eliminate it. It sets you up for a number of internal recruiter scenarios that are harmful. Ditto for your ‘home phone’ – list your mobile only.
1. Do you live too far away? Will you manage the commute? That’s nobody’s business but yours.
2. Your address may reflect your socio-economic status – is that a really ritzy neighborhood you live in, or one on the fringe? And what business is it of theirs? Maybe your great aunt Annie left you her estate. Maybe you got a screaming deal in a up and coming neighborhood.
3. Your safety. I’m security minded and I never give out my home address on anything. There are too many people ready to take advantage of that.
If you have an old domain email address like aol.com or earthlink.net, unload it. Get a g-mail or yahoo.com address.
I’ve said this before – clean up the skills section of your resume. If you’re working in DOS or mainframe technologies or it’s relevant to the work you do now, ok. If not, remove it. that’s also true for Windows 3.x, 98, 2000 and Vista.
If you’re a new grad, don’t put your Education section with your brand new degree up top. To those of us in the biz, this shouts NEWBIE! There are groups of recruiters who specialize in new grads, and companies like Microsoft and Amazon have fleets of recruiting programs targeted at you, but the rest of us won’t be of much use to you anyway.
Graduation/degree dates – never! Automatic assumptions about you being too old or too young! If you have a college degree, drop the high school info.
Hope this helps!
