Thursday’s WSJ has an example of how a 49 year old woman was able to get more attention for jobs by adding a photo to her resume where she was dressed to look younger and trendy. She also tried to minimize the length of her experience by removing her graduation date and some of the earlier jobs. What do you think of adding a photo to your resume?
More to the point, what do we think about the blatant ageism this article suggests? Without a link to the article itself, I guess I could be mistaken, but surely the point isn’t that she added a photo to her resume but that she had to do it, and had to play down her hard earned experience, because people wouldn’t give her a job without doing that. I kind of hoped we were past that sort of thing.
If an employer is looking for someone to head up a market for the 19 to 34 demographic, they are probably going to look for someone in that age range. Here “hip youthful” look got her in the door to places that she hadn’t been able to get an interview previously. Sorry I don’t have a link, it was in the paper version (although it might be online as well).
I have a photo on my linkedin (about the only thing I use for CV these days). I’ve often thought about what the picture says about me and whether it helps or hurts my chances to win favor with a prospective employer. At the end of the day, though, if they don’t hire me because of what I look like, I probably didn’t want to work there anyway.
@Steven – I think the point is that might not call you in for an interview based on how you look (not saying you look bad, just hypothetical). Once you get to the interview it is up to you, but you don’t want to be passed over because of a stereotype based on the way you appear. In this article she had several different pictures and used different ones for different employers to try to cater to their business.
This is standard fare. When someone in their 40s looks at job requirements, they will see they have an extra decade or so of experience the potential employer does not want to read about.
Hiring is built around younger people…
E.g. how do I bring in directly relevant experience from 15 years ago without
[apology for the partial comment]
Hiring requirements are typically built around younger people. This is standard fare. Someone in their 40s often has an extra decade or so of experience the potential employer does not want to read about.
How do I bring in directly relevant experience from 15 years ago without talking about less relevant things 7 years ago? Often someone who did something exactly relevant within the last 3 years looks a lot better on paper than someone with broad and varied experiences, even if those experience make them a better fit.
But I agree with Mark Shead, it is all about getting to the interview: once there, everyone has a fair shot…
Unless you stutter, are ugly, blonde, a minority…
There can be some cases where the appearance of age is an inteview benefit; those are pretty rare in tech, and require special marketing to make work. Youth is in demand. Any experiences before Google hit $400 a share on at least partially obsolete, it is a new world people keep telling themselves.
I think the question is – is it relevant? Does it help you stand out from a sea of bland word documents and does it get you an interview?
We’ve created http://www.nuresume.com to help students showcase their portfolio and skills via multi-media since voice, motion and pictures can be more compelling than words. We allow for photos, videos and audio to be added to a NUresume but give the caveat that only add something if it helps communicate your strengths. Otherwise, it’s a distraction and irrelevant.
I was intrigued by the WSJ article because I’m about the same age as the woman in the article and work as a contractor in web content production (thus, continual job interviews). Dropping from a size 14 to a size 8, getting into an extremely aggressive workout routine, and buying my professional wardrobe at The Gap has made a significant improvement in my ability to get contracts from small to mid-size tech companies. And, yes, my online resumes (with photo) don’t mention anything I did more than 10 years ago. I occasionally encounter interviewers who initially can barely talk to me because I’m 20 years old than they are, but a focused, project-based conversation is usually enough to bring them around. You can’t put all the blame on younger people who are wary about older co-workers. Quite a few of my contemporaries cling to such out-dated work styles (i.e., hierarchical, linear, 9-to-5, ass-covering, or tech-phobic) that I don’t want to work with them, either.