Resume Botox 9 Ways Your Resume Can Avoid Ageism - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Resume Botox 9 Ways Your Resume Can Avoid Ageism - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career So many 40+ job seekers complain about age bias. But many 40+ job seekers dont realize that the way their resume brands them may actually cause or amplify ageism. I talked about this in last weeks column Is Your Personal Brand Making Ageism Worse? This week, lets discuss solutions to self-inflicted ageism, by examining ways to change your resume to lessen the effects of ageism. Just like your resumes personal brand can unknowingly increase ageism, you can also brand yourself to reduce the negative perceptions of age. Your personal brand can give the perception that youre a superior candidate, technologically current, up to date in your industry, flexible, willing to take direction, and reasonably priced. Many 40+ candidates wonder why employers make snap decisions about how effective youll be at your job because of your age. Employers make snap decisions about many parts of your resume, since they decide whether youll get an interview or the discard file in 15 seconds and decide if youre qualified or not in 4 6 seconds. Think of these recommendations as botox for your resume. 9 ways to change your personal brand to avoid ageism: Be Great For THAT EXACT JOB: You cant be great for all jobs, so why write a resume that brands you as awesome for 10 different things? Your audience reads hundreds of resumes each day and they all start to look alike. Your readers search for something that makes you look different than other candidates if they cant find anything substantial, they focus on things like age, employment gaps and prior job titles. If youre the only candidate who has already solved similar problems, theyll want you. Differentiate yourself in a way your reader cant ignore and theyll stop focusing on your age. Demonstrate Subject Matter Expertise: If youre over 40, you were taught that being a generalist was desirable by employers, because you could remember how to handle many different problems, Then came our collective memory bank, Google, so knowing a little about many things wasnt so helpful to employers because they had Google to remember a little about many things. Today, employers look for deep domain knowledge, so you can provide more value than a Google search. If you demonstrate generalist skills in your resume, you remain buried in the ATS. Todays hiring managers screen for subject matter expertise first, even for generalist jobs, determining your ability to handle other tasks during the interview. Dump Years Of Experience: Were used to years of experience demonstrating wisdom and a deep understanding of the job and industry. In some jobs thats still important, but less than it used to be thanks to the giant collective memory of Google. Since Google reduces employers dependence on experience, why trumpet years of experience at the top of your resume? While years of experience carry less benefit, it now just screams Im old. Drop Details Of Early Jobs: I dont recommend excluding early jobs they show you werent in jail (yes, Im serious). However, you dont have to include every last detail of what you did in your first job out of school because, who really cares? Worse, when you include a lot of details about jobs 10 15 years ago (or more), you look like youre waxing nostalgic about the good old days. This gives the impression that your best days are behind you and youre all washed up. Drop references to old technology: Unless youre looking for a job to support old technology, drop the COBOL and Visicalc references they dont tell your audience that youre technically adept in todays technology. No one cares that COBOL programming and Visicalc spreadsheets were took more talent, back in the old days. These technologies were probably obsolete before the person reviewing your resume WAS EVEN BORN. Use Social Media:Want to show that youre technologically adept with current technology? Then use it. Start a blog, start a Linkedin group and tweet (about something other than what you ate for lunch or that youve entered a store or restaurant). Use current resume formats: Dump objectives and summary statements, demonstrate the value youve created for employers, stop describing your day to day activities or job function. List education last, not first: If you want to show that you understand how todays hiring manager (your hopeful boss) thinks, demonstrate that you understand its more important what youve done than where you went to school. Use Bullets Instead Of Paragraphs: Your readers cant pick up details in paragraphs during the 15 seconds they take to decide if you get the interview or not. When you use bulletpoints, you show you understand how employers think today not how they thought 10 or 20 years ago. You can affect how employers perceive your effectiveness and how they view your age. If you make it a weakness, then your age will be treated as a weakness. If you make it part of your strength, it will be perceived as a strength. Author: Phil Rosenberg is President of http://www.reCareered.com, a leading job search information website and career coaching service. Phil also runs the Career Central group, one of Linkedin’s largest groups for job seekers and has built one of the 20 largest personal networks on Linkedin globally. An active blogger about social media, career advice and job search information, Phil’s articles have been published by The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, CNN, CBS, AOL, FastCompany, CIO, ZDnet, The Examiner, and leading job/career/recruiting publications and sites. Check out one of Phil’s complimentary job search webinars at http://ResumeWebinar.com.