I am in my 50s. Yes, age bias exists and, yes, it is illegal. You won’t always be able to avoid it. But age bias is sometimes not really about your actual age, it is about certain soft skills and attitudes that employers desire but older employees are less likely to value. And if you learn to address those issues, you can make concerns about age go away.

Attitude

First of all, if you think the world is against you, I will bet it shows in your interviews. You need to peel back the layers on your emotions. Do you think society has fouled up again? That young managers don’t know what they are doing? Or is it that you don’t know how/where to sell yourself at this stage of your career and are afraid?

Your focus should be to find the companies for which you are a highly desirable applicant just as you are and to present yourself to those companies in a manner that makes you one of the first applicants to be selected for an interview. While this may require a stronger sell than was necessary a few years ago, it is not at all impossible. It just requires some additional strategic layers and may indicate a different kind of company than the one you left. For instance, a smaller company or start-up may prefer a more experienced candidate to obtain a greater depth of industry knowledge with a smaller staff count. Or target your skills in business development (well-documented with case histories) to a company who has been struggling with the issue for some time.

If you are significantly overqualified for a job description as written, don’t spend a lot of time applying for it. The company will be concerned that you will leave as soon as you find a job for which you are better suited. You could offer to sign a contract promising that you will stay at least 2 years, but they will still be concerned that you will become crabby in the role because you are being under-utilized and that you will be disruptive to the balance of the team structure.

Trends in age of employees

• 2000-2003
  • The number of workers under the age of 45 was constant.
  • The number of workers over 45 increased 86%.
• 2005
  • 45% of workers are over the age of 45.
• 2010 projected
  • Labor shortage due as baby boomers retire
  • Most boomers plan to work full-time or part-time after retiring.

How older workers are perceived

• More expensive than younger employees doing the same work (usually true).
• Difficult to supervise, they think they know more than team mates. Poor or selective follow-up.
• Inflexible, grumpy, frumpy, more likely to argue. Poor communication skills. Less political.
• Hard to train, don’t know new technology.
• Disconnected from company vision and younger team-mates. Prefer to be sole contributors.
• Get sick more often (false).
• Low and declining energy. Resist overtime.

Market demand for new hires

• As the pace of corporate innovation increases, the duration of the average permanent job decreases because company priorities change more rapidly, and your seniority or longevity may be irrelevant. The career track you were on for the last ___ years doesn’t matter. The employer wants to know if you can hit the ground running for today’s needs.
• 2 out of 100 resumes result in a job offer.
• A resume needs to be better written to be effective because employers have access to more resumes through websites and job databases. Is your resume well-written enough that you will be one of the interviewees chosen from 20 resumes? 100?

Strategies to try

So what am I saying? Learn and emphasize what a company values in today’s market. Make sure you know how to sell yourself. Focus on the benefits of your depth of knowledge, but make sure you also counter the expected negative attitudes associated with older workers. Note the ways attitude as well as knowledge is being addressed in the bullets below:

• “I really enjoy being on teams which solve problems and grow business.” Don’t just say “I have lots of experience” which would emphasize the gap in age but not the quality of experience and your willingness to be a team member.
• “I have the contacts to drive growth.”
• “I thrive in fast-paced environments.”
• To an insurance or medical company with older customers: “I may understand your customer better than a younger applicant.”
• “Yes, I supervised many people. Learned how to work with lots of different kinds of people. Can we take a tour of the company? I would like to see how you do it.“
• “I can start as a part-time consultant to let you evaluate what I offer at a small cost.”
• “I just attended a conference on that new technology and was a panelist.”

The simple answer? Don’t do it.

• I have seen national studies that claimed about 70% of resumes have “mistruths” in them.
• Other studies state 25-50% of resumes have “embellishments” (an exaggeration but not lie.)

The most common lies:

• Length of employment gaps
• Titles
• Degrees completed
• Salary
• Reason for leaving
• Not mentioning a job from which you were fired
• Taking credit for an idea developed by the team
• When career started (age)
• Size of business or projects managed
• Rank as a sales person or total revenue you represented
• Claiming to be “Consulting” when you were billing zero hours

I could quote more studies, but the point is: Recruiters and Hiring Managers EXPECT there to be many lies in resumes and in the interviews we have with applicants so we look and listen for them.

Easiest to detect

The one I hear most frequently is about salary/bonus. I ask people their current salary and bonus in a very deliberate way and listen to how they handle it. I can hear the long, pregnant pauses while the speaker is trying to figure out how much they can increase the answer since I gave them a chance to. The process varies if I called them versus when they called me. Rarely does the speaker need the same length of time to answer other questions. It is one of the lies that are easiest for the listener to detect. And it is a very good indicator of whether I should trust the other answers I hear will hear from the same source.

Legal penalties

I called a lawyer I know who specializes in employment law for his knowledge of possible consequences. There are apparently no formal legal penalties in Minnesota for lying in the job application process, but lying on a job application certainly is a ground for immediate termination (not that the employer necessarily needs grounds under the employment-at-will doctrine). Call me (anonymously if you wish) for a referral to him.

Situational stress

We also know that lying increases:

• In a recession as the stress of finding a job increases
• As age of the applicant increases because the stress of finding a job increases
• If an applicant was a poor fit for a job and it ended very badly
• If the applicant is not good at articulating their value to their past employers

So what do you do if you are tempted to lie? Don’t. Instead, take a few steps back in your process and analyze which hiring manager SHOULD want to hire you and why. Have you done enough homework about the companies you are targeting? Do you know for which roles you are most marketable? Have you done enough selling to show the hiring manager why you are a must-meet-applicant? Instead of applying to 200 companies, figure out the 15-20 companies for which you will be one of the most desirable applicants and tailor your pitch to discuss why you are indeed worth knowing for that role.

Illness

A woman who just finished with a long illness called me today and asked for advice on how to handle the gap in her resume. Illnesses and disabilities are complicated and deserve their own very long article but don’t hide the gap or offer a lie. On the other hand, don’t volunteer more information than is necessary, especially if disabled. Talk to a certified disability job counselor for advice if that applies to you.

In the case of the woman who had been ill but was not now disabled, I told her to simply say she had been on sabbatical for an undefined personal issue but was now ready and able to work 40 hours a week without distraction. She needs to carefully research the clients who would be thrilled to have her for what she does know and have a very polished selling statement ready to offset fears related to the unexplained gap. She should have strong testimonials ready. If necessary, she could offer to work for them on a contract-to-hire basis or discounted pay scale until she establishes her value in the present time-frame. She still may have trouble “getting back in” but she shouldn’t compound doubt about her reputation/ability with a lie. If there is no fear the illness may return, you could offer a doctor’s note to show you are fully recovered.

Fast facts:

1. 70-80% of jobs are filled through referrals and networking where the client is familiar with the reputation of the job applicant before receiving the actual resume. Those resumes are read very differently than the resumes of total strangers. (Read my blog posting The “Hidden Job Market.”)
2. When a hiring manager reviews resumes for people he (or she) has not had referred to him, he reads them looking for cues that will maximize his ROI (return on investment) for the available budget. Therefore, the first applicants to be called for an interview will be closest to an ideal fit. If and only if one of these candidates does not work, will the hiring manager widen the search to applicants who offer a less perfect fit.
3. Hiring managers don’t always put everything they are looking for in the job ad, just the “minimums.” And they usually make the ads broader than the ideal to widen the net and catch more fish in case the ideal candidate does NOT show up in the narrow definition of the specs.
4. A job ad for a JAVA programmer when posted in a big database like www.monster.com will generate 300-400 applicant resumes after about a week. A job ad for a Director of Marketing will generate 25-75 applicants.
5. At least 50% of the people who send a resume to any job posted in a public place will not actually be qualified for the role. Responding to ads for which you are not a close fit is a poor use of your job hunting efforts. It also may annoy a hiring manger who has limited time available.

Are you the best candidate?

You should do homework on what might be important to the client beyond what the job ad says. You can research this through:

• Annual reports
• Informational interviews
• Former employees of that company
• Trade press
• Internet
• Networking
• Reading other jobs ad from the company

If your homework reveals you are a strong candidate, make sure you add content to your resume to demonstrate you are an excellent risk. Instead of applying to 100 companies for which you are a long shot, send tailored resumes to the 15-20 clients where you are most likely to be the preferred candidate.

How to show you are the best applicant

This is done through case histories, testimonials, and details in the resume that show your strategic leadership. If possible, you should show you made the company money, saved the company money, or made it more efficient.

The introduction

70% of hiring managers don’t read beyond the first half of the first page of the resume or spend more than 30 seconds reading before they decide whether or not to opt out. This means that you need a powerful introduction to your resume that makes builds the reader’s expectation that you are a relevant and exciting candidate. This will keep him reading longer so he is more likely to be sold on you.

Beyond the resume

If you think about it, you need to be ready to use similar strategies in networking, cover letters, interviews, in every contact with a potential hiring manager. Your objective is to reinforce repeatedly that you are the best of possible candidates for the job.

But if you have a finance or family in the targeted city, and you rent, you have a better chance of successfully relocating.

• If you have friends or relatives in the new city, and you could stay with them for a short time, put two addresses on your resume. It makes it look like you are easier to move emotionally and physically. Show two phone numbers if possible also.
• An employer may not pay to fly you out there for an interview depending on your salary level and the ease of finding people like you. (Web Designers are easy to find, Marketing Managers with Fortune 100 consumer packaged goods experience are not.) So you may need to organize a lot of interviews around a few trips you pay for. Call recruiters and potential interviewers and tell them you will be there the third weekend of every month from Thursday to Tuesday and can they arrange interviews for you while you will be in town.
• Find recruiting firms that have offices in both cities. The references from the current location recruiter office will make you much more appealing to the remote office (because the local recruiter can verify the quality of your clients and work.) You can look up recruiters in both cities by using the printed Directory of Executive Recruiters published by Kennedy Publishing, Fitzwilliam, NH. You can buy a copy for $40 on www.amazon.com or find it a $300 version of it in a business oriented public library. If you are junior or your title is common in the job databases, you can use www.indeed.com to do the same thing.
• If you frequent a church or temple, go to the elders’ council of the sister church/temple in the new city and network.
• If you belong to a professional association that has chapters in both cities, join the chapter in the new city months before you want to be in the new city and attend some meetings or a regional conference. Network with the Board of Directors. Write an article. Give a speech.
• Look for opportunities to do part-time contract work in the targeted city before you move. Use that employer as a reference to other employers in the new city.
• Look for companies with a large percentage of telecommuters. They will be less threatened in the transition stage.
• Look for companies with hundreds of global offices. Many of my contacts at one employer travel 50-70% of the time anyway and as long as they live near a large airport, the parent company does not care where “home” is.
• Interview current employees of the firm to understand why the potential employer is willing to go to the hassle of importing someone. Sometimes you will uncover problems for the firm with its reputation in the local market.