Age Proofing Your Next Job Search

Age Proofing Your Job Search.mp3 – powered by Happy Scribe

Yes. My first recommendation is that you value yourself and see your age as an asset, not a liability.

We are Looking Forward Our Way. Hi, this is Brett, and with me, as always, is Carol for Is. We want to thank our listeners for joining us today and we hope you’re enjoying our podcast episode. If so, give us a thumbs up on Google. That’d be great.

Wonderful. Hey, Brett. How’s it going?

All right.

Good. Well, it seems that every time I turn around, I see another article supposedly helping job seekers. It has become common to hear how we can be better candidates. It’s all over the Internet. What resumes should be, what they shouldn’t be, what to include and what not to include. How to dress, how to answer questions on and on. But the most important issue I’ve wrestled with is how to convince an employer I’m not too old. Today, we are going to dive deeply into how to ensure for our job seekers that they can age proof their job search.

Right. Let’s say hello to our friend and second 3rd time around, Sharon Hamersley. Sharon has joined us for several podcasts helping us to guide listeners on how to be great job candidates. Sharon is known as and calls herself the Resume Coach she is. And the LinkedIn coach she is. And she’s also the owner of Keys to Performance. Hey, Sharon, thanks again for joining us today.

I’m so glad to be here. This is just wonderful. I always enjoy speaking with you folks and maybe imparting a little bit of.

Wisdom, a little bit.

Listeners strapped into those chairs. Sheridan and I have been doing this for a long time, so this is always fun to have her back. And thank you for joining us. Sharon, let’s first discuss your background, the services you have been providing both job seekers and employers for many years.

Well, I actually started with Carol Pacad, Ohio State University.

Go, Bucks.

Yes. As an academic advisor with a focus on career development. And then after that, I’ve worked for the past ten years with job seekers in transition, looking to make a change or to reenter the workforce. My goal is actually to provide each candidate with the knowledge, skills and tools to conduct a successful search and find that job that’s really their best fit. And as LinkedIn has become a key piece of the job search, teaching candidates how to leverage LinkedIn to enhance their visibility has also become a key part of my business. And recently, I started also coaching small business owners and entrepreneurs how to increase their visibility and attract clients on LinkedIn.

Sharon, what you just said is so important for job seekers to hear, and we’re going to talk more about this, but it’s not just finding applications to fill out. It’s really, truly looking at a career search and a career discovery.

That’s correct. I saw the other day you don’t have a job goal. You actually have. They were speaking specifically about job search strategies. You have a company goal and organizational goal.

Good point.

Yeah. Well, needless to say, job searching has dramatically changed over the past few years. Even though employers need more staff, job seekers need to do a better job of showing that they’re a great candidate. What’s changed in the searching process, and what do job seekers need to understand in today’s application process?

Well, first of all, and this is no surprise, I don’t think, to anybody, change is the name of the game. Really what we’re seeing a lot of, and I’m sure this is driven in part by the pandemic, but I think it would have happened naturally even without that. And that’s the switch from phone interviews to video interviews on Zoom or Teams or one of the web platforms. I think that’s happening quite a bit now. Applicant tracking systems, or ATS for short, have gotten more sophisticated, but they still really present a barrier both to the job seeker and to the employer in terms of finding a match. But there are ways to work through that as well.

That’s really critical.

Yes. Right. Some employers, especially for more senior level positions, they’re actually asking candidates to do a presentation to solve a problem the organization is currently facing. And that’s kind of a two edged sword because you’re actually, in many cases, giving your time and your experience and your skills and your knowledge away to employer with absolutely no guarantee that anything is going to come of it. So that’s a real challenge too, and something people need to think about and looking ahead. The expectation for information beyond the resume and cover letter and LinkedIn profile may include videos where the candidate is answering questions. Some of these are automated, some of them aren’t. But again, it’s a new technology that employers are starting to use more and more.

Right. That notion of creating programs is not new in and of itself. I think doing it video and electronically is. But I have that situation. It’s probably been 2025 years ago, and part of the application process was to create programs, which I did. It was written documents and had to turn it over to them. And the entity that I had applied to actually implemented both of my programs but didn’t hire me. And when you really think about it, too, you’re giving away proprietary knowledge and you can’t go back and sue them because you’ve given it to them. So it’s really critical for folks to think through that. And the bottom line is, do you want to work for an organization that has you working without getting paid?

Exactly. And I think that’s something that you really need to think about in the process.

Right. And if employers are listening, you need to think about it if that’s part of your process. Here’s the other side of the story. Okay, Sharon, let’s first start our conversation thinking in terms of preparation, what are the first steps a job seeker should take before they actually start sending out applications and resumes?

Well, the number one mistake I see job seekers make is to immediately start applying for any number of jobs that they believe they’re qualified for. They really just hop in and they start throwing applications out there. This usually, in fact, almost always, is a recipe for frustration and burnout because the odds of actually receiving any response are very low. See numbers like 10% or even less. So what I recommend is that before you even send that very first application, take a step back and think about the following number one, what skills do I really enjoy using in my work? And then how does my current skill set match with the requirements of the jobs I’m interested in? Am I missing anything? If so, how can I fill that gap with certification or self study or any number of other methods? And finally, this is really critical. Where do I want to work? I really recommend that you identify five to seven target companies of interest. Doesn’t mean you can’t apply to other opportunities, but narrowing your search will likely save you time and effort in the long run.

Well, resumes are on top of the list. We all suffer as we create our own. Could you go through what should and should not be included in a resume? And how do we tweak that document to be age proof so at least they can’t do the math as quickly as subtracting? This agent.

Graduated from high school, right?

Correct.

Yeah, right. So your resume is really a snapshot or summary of your qualifications, and your goal is to communicate to the reader how you can help them with whatever problem or opportunity they’re hiring for. So the current preferred resume format starts with a short summary that’s really targeted at explaining in a very brief form what it is that you can help that employer with. Then your experience and your education or certification. You definitely need to ditch the objective statement. Objective says what you want. Employers, you know what? They don’t really care. They just care how you can help them.

Sharon and I go way back on those objective statements where we spent hours helping students come up with really catchy objective statements.

I’m glad they’re gone, actually. Me too. And you really need to concentrate on the last 15 years of experience. I see resumes that are basically something close to a novel, because it’s likely that those 15 years are going to be the most valuable to whoever your next employer is. Now, that doesn’t say that you shouldn’t list earlier experiences, especially if you’re looking maybe to make a move back towards what you did initially using all the additional skills you’ve acquired in the past 15 years. My recommendation is that you mentioned that early experience, briefly, maybe a few points of what you are able to do how you help those employers, but don’t put any dates on that. So that’s really important. Another very important item is to take the time to really figure out where you have gone above and beyond in your work. This could be special projects training, new hires, consistently outperforming sales targets, meeting tight deadlines under pressure, fixing broken processes. Everybody has these, but many if not most of the resumes I see simply list the job duties and that makes you look like everybody else. Everybody does have activities in their work life and maybe in their volunteer life too, that are significant, that really helped move whatever organization forward.

But we don’t tend to think like that. And some people are also just really shy about tooting their own horn. But if you don’t toot your own horn, nobody else is going to. And speaking of volunteer experiences, if you have significant volunteer experience as a board member, as the lead on a major fundraiser or other project, that definitely should go in your resume as an experience. Experience can be paid or unpaid. The point is to highlight what experiences you have that are going to really help that next employer. Right.

And the successes you had during those experiences and how you brought value just as if you were a paid employee.

Exactly.

A couple of points that I sort of want to stress here. I think that this discussion really brings about our belief that communities have great resources for job seekers to get help doing resumes. So it’s hard to get past writing down a list of tasks as opposed to really thinking through your accomplishments. Oftentimes you can’t do it yourself because you’re in that job and all you can think of is I have to go in the morning at 08:00 and turn on my computer and do this and this and this, and they never really see past the task. So we encourage folks to find someone who can help you do a resume. You need more eyes, not just for typos but for actual content. The other thing too, and I don’t know if you had this when you were at Ohio State, I always saw my female students went into detail and their resumes were long and packed and there was no space between sections and they just put in everything. And even if it was a list of tasks, it was everything. And the male students tended to be more fluffy and like just bare minimum information and you really had to kind of pull everything out of them.

So listeners just make sure that regardless of which direction you’re taking, neither of those are going to work. You have to focus in on those tasks. The other thing too that you brought up in the beginning of this question and answer was that a resume is a snapshot. You can be careful where you put your dates because it’s not a legal document.

Exactly.

If you’re doing an application listeners, and they ask for dates. Yes, you have to fill that out. But resumes do not. There’s more leeway.

Yes, exactly. And I would say one other thing about figuring out your accomplishments and people don’t think of this, especially when they’re in a job, but they really need to. And that is make sure that if you get an annual evaluation, a quarterly evaluation, or any kind of feedback right. Make sure that you save that. And in a place where if suddenly you’re let go, you can get a hold of that. If you get complimentary letters from coworkers or anybody, keep all of that because that is a treasure trove. That actually will help you kind of figure out some of this stuff. Right.

And you may have done a certification program even if the employer offered it and you finished that. And I’m using the term certification very loosely, but those are indicators that show not only are you able to learn, you’re willing to learn. And that’s an important piece in a resume.

Exactly. Okay, great.

So, Sharon, two questions that I have kind of a revolve around technology. First mentioned you the applicant tracking system. How do we ensure our resumes are actually read by these systems, which I’ll go on record as saying I think that has been the biggest stopper in the process of people finding great jobs and employers finding great candidates because it’s not really used very well. The second issue, what if we have to provide a video resume? You mentioned that, too, as opposed to a document. So those are kind of two technology issues.

Yeah. So matching your resume to the requirements of an applicant tracking system can be tricky. If you’ve done your homework in terms of identifying your skill sets and matching them with the requirements of the positions you’re applying for, you should be able to identify keywords and phrases that the ATS is looking for. You want to make sure that these keywords appear at the top of your resume in that summary statement. One tip that I have is that you always use the actual job title at the beginning of your summary statement, because that way immediately you alert the applicant tracking system that, oh yeah, this person is applying for this job, and that may help you get a little further along. Now, it’s not enough to simply put a couple of keywords in your summary. You have to make sure that you repeat them as part of your experience. Pick up on if they’re looking for someone with high level counting skills. Then in your accomplishments, you need to detail what programs you’ve used, how many reports you’ve done, all of those types of things using that software or that program. So that’s something that you really need to highlight in that as well.

Now, video resumes, those are really tricky. I don’t think most of us really want to be on camera.

I think that’s why we’re doing podcasting.

That’s why we’re not on camera today. Yet most people have a fear of public speaking that’s only, I think, second to the fear of death. The thought of speaking on camera can be really daunting. And your best strategy here is practice, practice, practice. Get a friend or a colleague or somebody just to fire up their phone camera and have you speak initially about something, a hobby, a book you just read, anything like that just to practice, and then you can run through that and see, oh yeah, well I use a lot of UMS and AHS, I need to fix that. I need to and they just said, we think that’s true, and to just get more practice at it. And I think that’s your best insurance. If you are asked to do a.

Video, you know, too, having somebody on the other side of that camera is helpful. I learned in public speaking in front of groups that you don’t look at the group. That’s what scares you. You kind of hone in on one or two people and hopefully friends, people, you know, who are going to give you positive feedback through positive looks to you, facial looks. And if you’ve got a friend on the other side of the camera, you’re talking to them, as opposed to being worried about talking to the camera and whoever is going to get the video.

Yes, exactly. That’s a good strategy for sure.

Well, let’s look at the technology question a little bit differently. There’s technology that we know, equipment, software programs. How do we include that information in a resume? For instance, are there training or certifications that are helpful software programs? We definitely need to know and others that we should drop off the resume. That’s somewhat antiquated now, or maybe not used, but we think it’s important. Where do they appear on a resume?

First of all, if the role you’re seeking is pretty technology heavy, and that could be in any number of roles and industries, I recommend including that information at the end of your summary. I was just working with a candidate who’s looking for an instructional design position. So we included things like all of the software that she uses to design programs, design web programs that she uses, Wetboard, which is a learning management system, those types of things. So I think that’s really important. And if the job posting lists certain applications, make sure they’re right there at the top of your resume right after your summary. I think that’s really important. Recent certifications should also be mentioned. I think if you gained an Advanced Excel certification last year, then I think it’s important to mention that upfront Advanced Excel Certification 2021 or something like that. So you do want to mention those. And it’s also important to mention in your experience section how you’ve used certain technology to achieve their desired results. So people can run reports till they’re blue in the face. But really expert people know how to sort through that data and make sure that it’s going to make sense to a nontechnical audience and can really explain that.

Right. This is another place on your resume to, again, show that notion of I can learn and I’m willing to learn. So because the job description asks for QuickBooks and you used peachtree and Quicken doesn’t mean you can’t do QuickBooks, it gives you an opportunity to maybe do a short online course about QuickBooks. And there are lots of places to get that information for free. I don’t want to say explain it on your resume because you don’t have length of a lot of space on your resume to long explanations, but you can include that with a qualifier saying you’re currently learning QuickBooks or something along that line.

Yeah. And this is another point that I really need to make, and maybe I even should have made it earlier. Employers, when they put a job posting out there, what they’re really looking for is that purple unicorn.

Right.

So I always tell people if you match 70, 80% of the qualifications, it may be like Carol said, you’ve used peach tree, not QuickBooks or something like that. That’s not in and of itself a disqualifier. You really need to do that. And on the other side, unless specifically mentioned in the job posting, don’t list technology or programs that are not in current use. Some people, I guess still some jobs still require programming languages that were current 20 years ago.

Yeah. Y two K needed basic COBOL.

Right. But that’s not and then finally, and this is really important, your email provider and your username. I can’t tell you how many resumes I’ve seen that have had@hotmail.com at AOL.com name. Really old technology that will date you quicker than anything.

Yes. My student. It was Fluffygirl@yahoocom.

Yes.

That didn’t work for applications.

No, it doesn’t. So really the current best practice is to have a Gmail account with your username first name, middle initial, last name@gmail.com, or some combination. And if you’re Jane A. Smith, there are going to be thousands of those. Please don’t put your birth date or high school graduation here as the number behind your username.

Right. Yeah. That’ll get you a lot of phone calls in spam real quickly.

Really.

So, Sharon, one of the things that clients used to ask me is, do they have to buy a new wardrobe in order to go and do their interviewing? And I would never tell somebody that they had to do that. But there are easy changes that you can make with your look for your pictures on social media that will support your job search as opposed to hurting you.

Yes. So employers are going to look at your social media. So you really need to take a critical look at your social media. LinkedIn, also Facebook. Check your Facebook, because if anybody can see your Facebook and you can lock down Facebook so not everybody can see it and you really should, especially when you’re in job search. But check all of those to just see what’s out there about you. And be prepared to put your best foot forward on LinkedIn. You really do need a headshot where you’re dressed professionally because that conveys that you’re serious about your job search. If a recruiter is put off by the fact that they can see you’re not a 20 something with 15 years of experience, then that’s really their loss. So I mentioned Facebook. Make sure that that’s pretty locked down. Other Twitter, TikTok, whatever social media you have, it’s really not a good time to have everybody in the universe be able to review that. You really want to keep that pretty locked down. Now, virtual interviews. We talked a little bit about virtual interviews before. Before signing on for the interview, check what you can see behind your camera because guess what, that’s what the interviewer is going to see, right?

So what I recommend is set up someplace where you have a neutral background and good lighting and you don’t want your face in the shadows. And double check, triple check to make sure that wherever you’re set up your WiFi isn’t going to drop. And have other people get off the WiFi while you’re on interviewing because that takes up a fair amount of bandwidth and somebody else is trying to play a game that’s going to really mess things up.

Good point. Good point. I had learned a little trick. I realized if you wait until you’re on the zoom or whatever the platform is for your discussion, it’s too late to change anything in your background. So I learned to just click on my camera on my computer and it would show me sort of what it’s going to look like. So if there’s a bunch of junk sitting behind me, I can put it on the floor so they can’t hear whatever. So it is possible to check this virtually before you are actually in the process of doing the interview?

Exactly, yes.

Well, social media has taken job searching to many new levels, as we just talked about. However, though social media can help a job search, networking is still really important. Can you give us an overview on why networking is still at the top of the list? Really? And tips on how to be a great networker utilizing social media as well.

So, yeah, networking really needs to be an ongoing activity in your life. And what that means for me is I’m always looking to share information with others and learn from them. Others have helped me in the past, so I’m looking to pay it forward. So networking is not so much a single event. I think people kind of think of it as going to meetings, shaking hands, passing out business cards, being hit up by whomever for whatever they’re trying to sell. And it feels kind of sleeky. And I understand if people think that’s what networking is, I wouldn’t do it either. But if you think of it more as that conversation that interchange between people, that goes on not constantly, but occasionally. So networking can take many different forms. You can reach out to former colleagues on LinkedIn, ask how things are going, and share some item of interest. Big part of networking, and I think everybody will probably agree with this, is volunteering in your community for causes that you are passionate about. Because when you meet people at these events, you’re going to have a common link right away. And as you chat with them, you may decide that some of them would merit having a further conversation to learn more about them, share more about you.

And that’s really a good way to build your network organically. And that feels good because again, you’re sharing information. You’re talking about mutual passion. Another good way is to attend or present at a professional conference. This is a great way to make new contacts in your field while paying it forward by sharing information. And the bottom line on networking is that you should always give before you receive. I think that’s a barrier that people see, oh, I’m asking for something. Well, think of it. What do I have to offer others before I ask for something? The more others perceive you as genuinely wanting to help, they’re going to be much more willing to help when you ask. And people really do want to help as long as you don’t put it out there, it’s like, Help me, please. And you don’t give them guidance or direction or you ask immediately for a job or those types of things, but they’re willing to help with any resources that they have.

That’s a good point, too, because one of the problems that job seekers have, particularly for folks who are in really difficult situations, is they tend to say, I’ll do anything, I’ll work for anything, just give me a job, kind of thing. In networking, just like in job searching, you’re not putting the responsibility on the person you’re talking to. The goal is to get information. But also it’s a two way street. You have to be a good listener to be a good networker. If you are getting information from folks, they’re going to expect to get information from you. So it really is back and forth.

Yes. And if you get information from somebody, follow up on it. Let them know that you followed up and what the result was, and thank them. Gratitude is never out of season, really. Yeah.

Well, Sharon, I can’t believe we’re already at the end of our program. This always goes so quickly. We have so much to talk about and tell our listeners. One of the things we always ask our guests is for their words of wisdom. What can you tell our listeners? What suggestions do you have on age proofing their job search and what resources exist in the community to support that job search.

Yeah, my first recommendation is that you value yourself and see your age as an asset, not a liability. Many job seekers immediately attribute rejection of their application as age discrimination. It certainly can be. But there are many other factors play into whether your application moves forward or not. Following current best practices for your resume. LinkedIn profile and other communications will be to those employers who are open to hiring experienced workers that you can really be a valuable asset to their organization and demonstrate we’ve talked about this already. But I just want to really emphasize it. Demonstrate that you are a lifelong learner. Always opening to learning new skills and applying them both in the workplace and in your personal life. I think that’s really critical. And it keeps you young. It keeps you fresh. Our brains work best when we feed them new information, and that’s really a lifelong thing. And then take advantage of the workshops offered by libraries and nonprofits. Here in central Ohio, the Westerville Library offers job search related workshops on a regular basis, and you can also get help with resume reviews and interviewing practices through agencies such as Mature Works, formally Employment for Seniors, Jewish Family Services, and Goodwill.

And speaking of the Westerville Library, I do have upcoming workshops at the end of August and the beginning of September on LinkedIn Basics and using LinkedIn for job search, so we won’t post those at homage.

Yeah.

Well, thanks so much for joining us today, listeners. Thank you for joining us. And don’t forget to check out the show notes on our site podcast website for more information and resources and the links that Sharon just talked about. We hope to hear from you, too. Don’t forget to review our podcast on Google My Business, and we look forward to talking with you again soon. Bye.