One of the biggest worries I hear from my senior level clients and job seekers in general is the fear of about age discrimination. Serious concerns begin around age 55, but some people, particularly women, tell me they begin to feel it as early as their mid-forties.
Yes, age discrimination is out there. But there are a lot of reasons, not related to skills, that people don’t get hired. Candidates may be considered too young, too old or, in some cases, the wrong gender. You may not get hired because you remind the interviewer of a former colleague or even a neighbor they don’t like.
Conscious and unconscious biases exist. We all have them.
While you can’t control other people's biases, you don’t have to feed into them either. In this episode, you'll learn some strategies to help you mitigate age discrimination.
In this session you'll learn
* How your email address may be aging you - and what to do about it
* Why you need a photo on LinkedIn - Hint: Profiles with photos a lot more views
* Why you need a background photo on your LinkedIn profile too
* How you may be misusing your LinkedIn profile, and how to fix that
* Why you need to rethink your look, is your wardrobe dating you
* Whether it's essential to wear a suit to a job interview, it depends where you live
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(Previously recorded, Live Show)
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Annette (00:07):
Hi, welcome to the smarter career moves podcast. I'm an at Richmond executive resume writer and principal of clear intelligence resume writing and career services. Let's get onto the show.
Annette (00:31):
Hi again, Annette Richmond here. Thank you for joining me today. Today's topic is age discrimination in the job search, or really how to mitigate job age discrimination during your job search. One of the concerns that I hear most often from my senior level clients and just job seekers in general is that they're afraid of being discriminated against because of their age, and serious concerns really begin around age 55, but some people, particularly women have told me that the concern begins at in their mid-forties. So yes, age discrimination is out there. There are a lot of reasons not related to skills that people don't get hired. So, , you could be too young, they could think you're too old. , it's very possible that you may remind them of a former colleague or neighbor that they don't like, these conscious and also subconscious biases do exist within all of us, so you can't control them.
Annette (01:42):
You can't control the subconscious bias that an interviewer may have against you, but there's no need for you to really feed into these things either. So I want to talk to you about a few different things that you can work on to help avoid discrimination, age discrimination. And a lot of it is just being current and modern and not, screaming that you're, over 50, 55 or 60. So one of them is a modern email. So a lot of people still hang on to their @aol or @yahoo email addresses, but those make you look old when you have them on your resume. So it's much easier to just get something current, like an @gmail address. that doesn’t make you look like you're stuck in the last century.
Annette (02:43):
One thing I want to caution is during your job search, you don't ever use your employer email because a lot of employers do monitor the employee emails. And this includes working with recruiters. If you're having correspondent with a resume writer or any kind of communication like that, you definitely want to use your personal email address. You want to also make it easy for recruiters and hiring managers to contact you. So include your email address, the nice new email address you have in the about section of your LinkedIn profile. If you're concerned about sharing your personal email, which is certainly maybe a valid concern, then get a new email just for your job search and keep your personal email for personal use. And when you do get a new email address, get something that's an your name or a variation of your name.
Annette (03:53):
Don't get something cutesy like car guy at, or talk to me at, you want to always be professional. If you are conducting a confidential job search, but you want to still have your email address in the about section. You can just include an innocuous phrase. As I suggest with my clients, you can put something like always interested in connecting with likeminded people, or always happy to connect with colleagues and clients or whatever feels comfortable for you in your situation. You also want to make sure that you have a LinkedIn photo. The people that I speak to who don't have a LinkedIn photo, the main reason is they're concerned about age discrimination. Again. Yes, it's out there, but there's all types, you may just remind them of someone they don't like, and they take an instant dislike to you.
Annette (04:51):
However, I will tell you that the benefits of having a profile photo far, far outweigh the risks. LinkedIn is considered social media, and I want to just give you a few stats here. A LinkedIn's own research shows that LinkedIn profiles with a photo get up to 21 times more views and nine times more connection requests, , career builder did some research in 2018 and they found that 70% of employers research candidates on social networking sites like LinkedIn and 47%, they're unlikely to contact a candidate for an interview if they don't find them online. Now, I will tell you that as a former recruiter profiles, that don't have a profile raise red flags with the reader, whoever that reader might be, they wonder why don't you have a photo? , what might you be hiding? So again, , the having the photo is really important and you don't want to have a photo that's, , too old, maybe from 10, 15 years ago or something that's Photoshop so much that it doesn't even look like you, , you want to look your best. Of course, we all do. And a little Photoshop by a professional photographer. may enhance your appearance a bit, but you don't want to shock people when they meet you.
Annette (06:25):
And while you're there, another thing I want to mention is including a background photo, LinkedIn changed their interface a few years ago now. And it looks kind of more like Facebook with the LinkedIn, the profile, a headshot, and also a background photo. If you don't put anything in there, it defaults to a sort of generic blue box. A lot of people don't bother to put the background photo in. I talked to smart people who just don't even think about it. This is a mistake for a couple of reasons, for one thing, having that blue generic box behind you makes you generic makes you look generic and you don't want to give that impression. And the second thing is it makes you look like you're not savvy. You just don't know enough to put the background photo up there and you certainly don't want to, Oh, it look like that either.
Annette (07:24):
So there are very easy choices. A you might choose a photo that's relates to your career in some way you might choose to use a city skyline. If you live in a big, if you live in New York city or Chicago or something like that, you just want to make sure that it's either a photo that you took yourself. So of course you own the copyright to it, or it's a stock photo that you've purchased online. You can buy those very inexpensively. There are a number of sites out there but you don't want to just go on the internet and download the first photo. You see, that looks nice because it it's probably cooperated by somebody else.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah,
Annette (08:08):
I do want to mention, also, as far as your LinkedIn profile, you want to have a strong LinkedIn profile. There's so many people that just, , they misuse LinkedIn. They don't make it work for them the best way that they can all the time I'm on LinkedIn. And I see people's about section that's written in the third person. It sounds like a bio that they would write on their company’s website. You don't want that. And then there are people who spend most of the space on their LinkedIn profiles putting in information about their employers. The about section may talk a lot about what the employer does, and even in the professional experience sections they may give very big space, several paragraphs to their employer and what the employer does. So when people go to your LinkedIn profile now, and that will be someone you meet at a networking event who wants to learn more about you, it might be a recruiter or an employer who's received your resume and has some interest in you.
Annette (09:19):
They're going to check you out online. First, they want to know about you. That's why they're going there. So you want to share things like, why do you do what you do, what gets you excited or makes you proud? You might want to talk about, why you chose your career in the first place. Maybe it's a calling for you, or maybe you've had an interesting career path. That's something that's memorable that you can include in your about section, but you do want to make sure that your profile is complete. , LinkedIn, is it a way like Googles and, , websites that don't have much content don't come up very high in someone's search. The same thing is true for your LinkedIn profile. If you have a barely their skeleton profile you may come up number 635 out of 722 in a recruiter search.
Annette (10:22):
There are thousands of recruiters on LinkedIn every day looking to fill positions and you want to come up at the top of their search, not down at the bottom. So the last thing I want to talk about is having a modern appearance. This doesn't mean that you should try to look younger than you are. But just as your resume should have a clean, modern look. So should you, so, , wearing the same suit or having the same hairstyle that you, , or even the same eye glass frames that you've had for 10, 15 years are going to make you look dated. If you are about to pull out the interview suit from the last time you were out of a job you might want to think about getting something new. And I want to share a few stats to keep in mind if you're shopping for that interview outfit.
Annette (11:18):
Accountemps did a survey in 2019, and two things stood out. One was about company size and managers at companies with 250 employees, or more said that they thought employee candidates should definitely wear suits to job interviews, but managers at companies that were smaller with less than a hundred people were more flexible. And it also depends on where you live. Geographically speaking, the majority of managers in Miami, New York city and Washington DC said the candidates should always wear a suit to a job interview while managers in Austin. And Seattle said that a suit wasn't necessary as long as the candidate looked professional. So bear all those things in mind as you're putting together the outfit for your next job interview. The final thing that I want to mention is don't have a chip on your shoulder. Don’t anticipate age discrimination, don't send your resume in expecting that you're not going to get contacted. Don't go to a job interview expecting age discrimination. When I was a recruiter, one of the candidates that I worked with was this really cool woman. She was in her sixties at the time. I did not ask her. She just mentioned it to me in conversation.
Annette (12:48):
And while I didn't place her myself, she was one of the top candidates in the running for position with a digital marketing company.
Annette (13:02):
And she did find a position through someone else shortly afterwards. This person was vivacious, she had an engaging personality. I didn't meet her face to face. She sounded great on the phone. But when I looked at her LinkedIn profile, there was a woman, she looked like someone you'd want to meet, vibrant with a big friendly smile and a current haircut. Being of a certain age, didn't stop her and it really doesn't have to stop you either. So thanks again for joining me today. And I do wish you the best of luck with your job search, please visit our website career intelligenceresumewriting.com and follow us on social media for a lot of other free career tools, information and advice. Thank you.
Annette (14:00):
[Inaudible]
Annette (14:00):
Thank you for joining us for the smarter career moves podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's show. If you did, please subscribe. Thank you.