All of the experts we spoke with said the same thing; omit your age from your resume. But exactly how can you do this? Dwayne Keiffer, assistant director of career development at Messiah College in Grantham, PA says the applicant should have two different types of resumes.
“A functional resume focuses on your accomplishments and competencies that you have to offer an employer,” said Keiffer. “It does not focus on when you worked and may be slightly broader than a targeted resume. In a targeted resume, a job applicant focuses his/her skills on the job description that has been created by the employer and the candidate is not trying to reflect every one of his/her job skills.”
Matthew Brink is the director of the career development center at Saint Joseph’s University. He says if applicants focus on how they can make a difference for the company, the question of age will become irrelevant.
“Candidates should focus the ways in which they provide solutions to employers hiring needs,” said Brink. “Instead of leading with, ‘I need a job,” lead with, ‘I can make the following contributions to your organization which strengthen your organizations in the follow ways.'”
Brink also says a few other things that will kill your resume are salary demands, grammatical/spelling errors and an unprofessional email address.
Dwayne Keiffer is an assistant director of career development at Messiah College.
Matthew Brink is director of career development at Saint Joseph’s University.
Comments
How does one truly omit his or her age from a resume? An employer could possibly infer ages from graduation dates (i.e.: candidate graduated high school in 2000, candidate was probably 18, since it's 2009 then candidate must about 27). Is there a way around this?
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