By Nancy Collamer,Work & Purpose Blogger

Next Avenue, October 1, 2018 —

12 tips for job hunters over 50 from a pair of career pros

If you’re over 50, do you worry that your age might hurt your job prospects? Sadly, you could be right. As my Next Avenue editor Richard Eisenberg recently wrote, it now takes the average 55+ job seeker seven to eight months to find a job compared with just 15 weeks for job hunters between 20 and 24.

Jan Melnik

Ageism persists, even in this tight labor market. But according to career pros Jan Melnik (president and chief job-search strategist at Absolute Advantage) and Marie Zimenoff (CEO of Resume Writing Academy), there are smart steps you can take to age-proof your resumé and LinkedIn profile to increase the odds of landing a job.

Marie Zimenoff

These women recently shared their best practices during a webinar for the Resumé Writing Academy I attended, called Eluding Ageism: Writing Strategies for Clients 50+. If you’re a 50+ job seeker, or may be sometime soon, I think you’ll want to hear what they said. Here are 12 of my favorite tips from Zimenoff, who is CEO of the Career Thought Leaders Consortium, and Melnik, who is on its board.

Your Resume

  • Remove college graduation dates, except in cases of a newly minted degree or certificate. Melnik said she has no issue with the inconsistency of showing a recent date with a new degree and omitting an old one.
  • Condense the resumé down to two pages max.  Your most recent 10 to 15 years of experience matter most, so you’ll want to highlight those, while condensing prior experience into a few sentences or bullet points. As an example: Earlier Career Background : Senior Public Accounting experience (5+ years) with two regional CPA firms.
  • Replace older font styles, such as Times New Roman or Garamond, with more contemporary fonts like Tahoma, Verdana or Cambria. 
  • Eliminate double spacing between sentences (unless you’re in academia). They’re a dead giveaway that you came of age during the typewriter era.
  • Omit the Objective Statement in favor of a Career Summary section. The career summary should showcase your key selling points in four or five bulleted statements.
  • Avoid phrases that needlessly date you, like “30+ years of experience.” Use “20+ years of experience” instead (25+ max). This makes your point without highlighting your advanced age.
  • Remove your street address (old school) and add hyperlinks to your LinkedIn address and, if you have one, your professional website.
  • Replace an AOL or Hotmail email address with one from Gmail. While you’re at it, avoid using numbers in your email address that could be construed as a birth year (e.g. Jason1955@aol.com).
  • Omit very basic tech skills like Microsoft Word or email that employers assume all applicants have mastered.
  • If you’ve spent the bulk of your career with one employer, don’t list the full date range at the top of the resumé (e.g. XYZ Company 1979-present). Instead, list dates and responsibilities for your most recent positions and consolidate your earliest roles without mentioning dates.

Your LinkedIn Profile

  • Re-write your LinkedIn summary in the first person. This is a small, but significant, change that will make your LinkedIn presence feel more personal, conversational and — most importantly — modern. While earlier versions of LinkedIn profiles were almost always written in the third person, in recent years, the pendulum has swung in favor of first-person narratives.
  • Upgrade your LinkedIn photo. A professional photo is best, but if you can’t afford one, you might be able to take advantage of a free photo shoot offered through a local library or career center. Use a recent photo (no 1980s glam shots), avoid distracting backgrounds and always remember to smile.

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