Since age became a protected characteristic, employers know that they can’t take it into account when recruiting unless there are ‘objectively justifiable’ reasons (which are actually quite hard to find!). Saying that, some of us think age is a factor employers still consider (even if it’s subconsciously) when deciding who to interview.
If you think the same, here are four tips to hiding your age on your CV:
- OK, so this may sound like a really obvious solution but simply do not include your date of birth anywhere on the CV. Some people might think it should be on a CV, but there is absolutely no reason why it has to be. This seems like the most logical way to obfuscate your age and try to take it out of the equation a little.
- You don’t need to include every single job you’ve had in your life which would be a dead giveaway in terms of your years. There is no reason why you can’t simply include the past 10 / 15 years’ worth of jobs and leave it at that. There is no rule that says you need to include any more than that or even as many as that if you have had multiple jobs in that time period. You should only include information in your CV that feels of most relevance to you. Anything further back than that won’t be too relevant for employers looking for recent experience anyway, as we change, mature and develop massively in terms of our workplace skills over time.
- Your qualifications do not have to have dates alongside them – usually the fact you have the qualifications is the important piece of information. Some qualifications may give away an age range, for example Scotland no longer has Standard Grades as the name of their examinations, they are now called National 4s and 5s. It may be possible to extrapolate your general age range by working back from when the change was made.
- If you are inclined to include personal information such as hobbies on your CV, then think about removing any reference to ‘spending time with the grandchildren’. This is just common sense and it will help at least a little when trying to ensure that you at least make it to the interview stage, where you should be able to excel.
We obviously can’t guarantee success even if you do any or all of the above, but it’s worth a try. It really depends on what the individual employer is looking for and unfortunately there is no way to persuade them to hire someone more experienced if they are looking for a younger person to train up to their specifications.
It is unfortunately very hard to prove whether you were given a fair crack of the whip, even though age is a protected characteristic. If you managed to get an interview before being turned down, it would be very hard to prove that you were discriminated against on grounds of age.
