Over 45 and Looking for a Job: Don’t Let Your Resume Date You

As a baby boomer, if you’re looking for a job, then you’ll probably feel a little left out in the job market. You realize that you aren’t ready to retire, but all those young recruiters that you’ve been sending your resumes to don’t seem to be interested in responding to your experience and qualifications. If you already know what it feels like to be discriminated because of your age, then there is only one culprit to blame – your resume! It is your resume that has been categorizing you as an over the hill, out of date candidate.

Yes, your resume can indeed put in the ‘over the hill’ category, and three common mistakes that people make. You know when you have to update your resume when it contains any of the following:

Old-fashioned resume trends

Outmoded technology skills

Outdated occupational or industry terminology

No need to fear if your resume is out of date. You can carry out an extremely useful resume makeover by following these tips:

Ensure that you are up to date when it comes to knowing the current industry technology. Check all the other job descriptions within your industry to determine what technologies prospective employers are actually looking for. Then learn all those useful technologies that are missing in your resume. Keep in mind that technological terms are generally used as keywords to filter out the best resumes from the databases.

Make sure your resume has all the current terminologies. Don’t use the same resume year after year as the earlier terminologies will come across as being outdated. Join professional associations to update yourself on the latest industry-lingo. Another good way to update your terminology knowledge is to go through other job descriptions. Search for recurring terms.

Make sure your resume reflects the current trends in resume style and format. The old resume rules certainly don’t apply in today’s world. For instance, never limit your resume to only one page as this also limits your ability to show your expertise and skills. No need to conclude your resume with a ‘References Available upon Request’ statement as this is already assumed. You past work experience should only be relevant to the new job. Think of your resume as a marketing tool and highlight the best parts of it instead. One resume does not have to handle everything anymore. Apart from tailoring your resume to suit different industries and fields, you can also tailor the way you save it.

While creating your resume, make sure it is done on a standard Word format (for email attachments and as printouts), and it can be made in a plain text format for submitting online forms. This will help save a lot of time for you since there is no more need to repair lost formatting that often occurs when copy pasting a Word document into a text format. Let your resume work for you instead of against and the same goes for your past work experience. Following these useful tips to update your resume can make a world of a difference when it comes to keeping potential employers interested.