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Personally if I were in your situation I'd remove all "old" dates and just put the last say 4-6 years of experience on the resume and leave the rest off so you'
by mattlondon 8y ago
Personally if I were in your situation I'd remove all "old" dates and just put the last say 4-6 years of experience on the resume and leave the rest off so you've just got a few years of experience just like someone with 4-6 years experience would have (it is probably also the most relevant). If you've been at the same company all that time, break it down by major projects. Also hopefully this is obvious but dont put your birthday, gender, photo, "married with 3 kids and 2 dogs" etc etc on their.
My thinking is, if there is no indication of your age ("35 years of experience", graduation dates in the 70s/80s etc), then there is less scope for unconscious bias (or just overt ageism) to creep in since there are less clues. Same with adding potentially "irrelevant" experience from older jobs - less clues for people to jump to assumptions about (both tech/industry, as well as just the age thing again)
Once you've got your resume through the bias-blockers you can then wow them with your energy and enthusiasm when you get a chance to talk to them on the phone, then wow them again when you bounce into their office and blow them away with the interview. If you do really well in the interviews, you've given them some really solid evidence of your awesomeness that they've seen with their own eyes that will be hard to ignore, even if they think (consciously or otherwise) that you are old.
Resumes are so easy to pass on when you've got a stack of them to work through (so impersonal and instantly forgettable), but interviews are "real" events with real memories and real personal interactions that - I find - helps override assumptions and unconscious biases.
Good luck!
- gaius 8y agoPersonally if I were in your situation I'd remove all "old" dates and just put the last say 4-6 years of experience on the resume and leave the rest off so you've just got a few years of experience Doesn't that strike you as a little weird tho'? I mean experience is one of those things that the more, the better right? If you could choose a surgeon or a lawyer with more or less experience, which would you prefer?