[fecak]

Recruiter here. I would absolutely recommend you not include any obvious indicators of age on your resume, at least in many parts of the country. Graduation dates are not required, and perhaps your first few jobs can be eliminated from the resume. A resume doesn't have to be a complete biography.

With 40 years of programming (not sure how many were hobby vs paid), you are likely to raise questions as to how many more years you would need to work. You can trim the appearance of some years off to get in the door and avoid the possibility of discrimination.

[chvid]

Hi recruiter - in what age/level of experience does "discrimination" come in and one should start to "trim" the number of years?

[fecak]

In my experience, that might be dependent upon where you are in the country, the leadership of a company, pre-determined notions and biases (likely unfounded) about the ability of older workers to keep up with trends, and the relative age of the employees you will be working with.

In the startup world (nationwide/worldwide maybe), ageism might be equated with "likely to have a family and commitments to prevent he/she from working longer hours than are typically expected". If that person writes "single, no kids, open to 60 hours per week" (and I'm not suggesting they should) on a cover letter, being 50 years old might not be an issue.

I usually recommend trimming jobs when they become irrelevant. Working on systems in the 1970's and 80's will show you have a foundation of knowledge that dates back through computing history, but I'd usually recommend trimming those types of things off (or at least limiting to them as "previous experience" entries with little content).

There is usually no reason to trim experience before you turn 40 these days, though as technology changes quicker that could become lower. The things most people did 15 years ago likely still have some relevance. 25 years might be another story.

[mjones]

Hi Recruiter,

I appreciate the value of what you have said but I wonder whether the deception by omission would count against me in the case that I get as far as the face-to-face interviews.

Thanks!

ps. The 40 years includes only the years I was paid. Prior to that I spent about a year learning how to program.

[fecak]

It depends on how much you omit. If you omit the last 35 years and your graduation date, you show up with the expectation of a 27 year old where you are likely in your 50s. That might be considered deceptive.

Graduation dates are usually the biggest issue, as older workers tend to drop their first jobs off the resume just to save space. So if your first listed job was in 1995, people will assume you are about 42 (we assume first job around 22 years old). But if you include a graduation date of 1985, we now know you are 52. So a graduation date makes a major difference there.

You can probably overcome any personal ethical issues by calling your experience section "relevant experience" if necessary. I personally don't find that necessary, as I don't think anyone has the right to assume a resume must contain every professional activity. Resumes from foreign countries often include photos, birthdates, and marital status, which is not recommended in the US (by employers or candidates).

Don't trim off too much - you want them to value your experience. But trim just enough where you are keeping most of the relevant work without sharing unnecessary and potentially unhelpful content.

[peteretep]

I'm also a recruiter. Once you've interviewed well, no-one will care what your CV said. When I was 19, and a developer, I would do the opposite; I had a very enigmatic CV long on skills and part-time roles and experience, without any dates to show they were part-time. It was intriguing enough that I got face to face with people, and from then onI was able to talk myself in to roles I knew I could do.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> Graduation dates are not required

Unfortunately many ATSs like Taleo insist on having your educational history. You can leave it out at peril of being eliminated as a candidate by a single ill-conceived filter.

[old-soft-man]

Appreciate the advice, Recruiter, but despise the suggestion that appearances apparently still matter more than reality.

[fecak]

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating ageism at all. I'm in my 40s, write about ageism somewhat frequently (1), and tend to work with candidates that are closer to my age or older. On Monday, I should be getting an offer letter for a female engineer who started her career in 1988.

I don't necessarily feel that appearances matter more than reality, depending on what appearance you are referring to. We're talking about resumes here (or at least I am), and we're in an industry where some (often the young) have opinions about the older members of the industry. This isn't new, and it's not even specific to the industry.

The reason I'd suggest trimming the resume is so you can actually be invited in to have that conversation where you can then convince someone who might be ageist that their bias is incorrect. By including information that makes it obvious you are of a certain age (for some it could be 30+, 40+, 50+, 60+), you are giving someone the ability to discriminate.

It goes the other way as well. Workers in their early 20's might want to appear (on paper) as old as reasonably possible.

The reality is that lots of older workers know their stuff, and will only be able to change the minds of those who discriminate by getting in front of them. I'm not suggesting "by any means necessary", but I have on issue with the tactics I suggest.

1 - http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/01/31/ageism/ (Overcoming ageism) http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2014/03/25/older/ (Why Hire Older Engineers)

[old-soft-man]

I was referring to resumes/CVs as embodiments of appearances, although now it occurs to me that web browsers are essentially appearances portals.

I guess I'm just disappointed that the "Information Age" became mostly about titillating a mostly passive audience into drooling over screens. Whereas I had a seemingly eternal career working on what used to be called "middleware", it now seems to be impossible to get noticed without droning on about one's vast "full stack" experience, which on closer examination seems to be mostly about ADHD-like rushes from one Javascript and/or MVC framework to another - again, mostly in the service of wowing the senses of screen addicts.

I'm also kind of stunned by the seemingly universal belief that there's really that much difference between underlying tools that make machines sing, and that anyone who was ever profoundly well-versed in one set of tools couldn't quickly come up to speed on yet another syntax. That, in other words, the word 'generalist' has become a curse, while the parroting of anything ending in '.js' a red-carpet-unraveling blessing.

I suppose the increasing speed at which new screen junkie drugs must be deployed to become relevant/profitable has something to do with it.

[mjones]

Thanks and doubly so for the links.

And thanks to all for the great information and perspectives!

[annasaru]

Useful advice . thanks