Resume Tip #13: Resume Length and Age Discrimination
April 4th, 2009
Sometimes experience can be your worst enemy. While it is illegal to discriminate against workers over 40, age discrimination is still rampant. One way to protect yourself is to limit your resume to the last 10-15 years of your experience. Cut everything else out and don’t give dates for your education. Recruiters are trained not to ask how old someone is because while technically a legal interview question, if the candidate is over 40 this kind of questioning could later lead to a discrimination filing if the candidate believes his age was a factor.
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This is even more true these days with so many mass layoff’s. I was laid off earlier this year after being with the same company for almost 30 years. My wife revamped my resume and even after leaving several positions within the company off, I still have a full two page resume. This is mainly due to the hi-tech nature of my job, length of employment, patent’s, security clearance and skill list. There are many of my co-workers/co-layoffer’s with mutiple degrees, patent’s and published articles who have more than two full pages. What is the resume standard for this type of experience?
It depends on the job and the hiring manager. For technical resumes, I always recommend making the length a secondary cosnideration to the level of detail. Talk to your recruiter or shoot me a copy of your resume and I can take a look.