Age-Proof Your Job Search: 5 Strategies That Work

Tammy Wiegand (00:04):

Hi everyone. Thanks for being here today. My name is Tammy Wiegand and I’m a Senior Customer Success Manager and Hiring Strategist here at iHire. I want to offer you a warm welcome to this session, Age-Proof Your Job Search: Five Strategies That Work. So before we get started, I’d like to point out some features on our webinar platform that put you in the driver’s seat. The widgets allow you to move and resize windows and explore content related to today’s presentation. Find the ask a question widget and submit your questions at any time during the presentation. Only our producers will see the questions and we’ll answer as many as we can after the webinar. Lastly, keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow for a recording of this webinar. And with that said, I’d like to welcome our speaker, Lori Cole. Lori is the iHire Brand Ambassador and a Certified Career Coach and Advisor with over 20 years of experience in staffing and recruiting on the online world. Now part of the brand team Lori’s past successes that iHire include directing the customer success team, the outplacement team, and the career advisor team. She’s always looking for ways to make life easier for our job seekers and employers.

(01:17):

So during today’s presentation, she’ll cover how to age proof your resumes and applications, interviews, salary, online presence, and your personal brand. First, let’s take a look at ageism and age discrimination in today’s job search.

Lori Cole (01:35):

Alright, well thank you so much Tammy, go ahead. You were going to ask me a question?

Tammy Wiegand (01:42):

No, I was just going to ask how many people feel like ageism is a problem in their job search?

Lori Cole (01:51):

I think from the candidates that I coach, a lot of people feel like ageism is a problem in their search and I think that a testament to that is the number of people we have on here today. People just feel like they are being discriminated against and I feel like I’m a good person to talk about this topic because I am 62. I’m a boomer and I’m right there with you. I understand your pain and I understand some of the challenges that you go through here. So let’s take a look at some statistics. In August of 2023 iHire did a survey and one in three workers over 50, over 33% believe that they’ve experienced ageism in their job search. Of those folks that said that that was their experience, over half of them, 53.8% said a potential employer had chosen a candidate younger than them for a job, although they were equally or more qualified.

(03:01):

So ageism doesn’t just happen in the job search though 23% of people said that they’ve experienced ageism while at work or on the job, and these are frustrating stats and unfortunately ageism can be a problem anywhere in the job search process. It can be in the way that ads are written. It can be in the way that the resumes are getting screened or viewed by the a TS. It can be in the prescreening questions or even in the salary and offer negotiation stage, but we’ve got some things that you can do today to protect yourself from this age discrimination and meet your career goals.

Tammy Wiegand (03:52):

Those are some disturbing numbers. Lori, what are some of the ways you recommend we can age proof our resumes?

Lori Cole (03:59):

Well, there’s lots that you can do. One of the things that we recommend, and this is for anybody of any age, never include a headshot. That’s what LinkedIn is for. You’ll have your headshot on LinkedIn, but you don’t have to put it on your resume. Make sure that you’re using a modern resume format, the layout, the fonts. If you don’t have the access to any of those templates, we have some great templates on iHire. They’re very eye-catching. You have four or five different templates that you can choose from and we’ve got it all set up for you. We’ve got the format, the layout, just like you need it with the summary at the top and then the skills so we have it all laid out for you ready to go. You just have to fill in those blanks and especially if you use our resume wizard, it is AI generated for part of your resume.

(05:01):

It is a great tool. Make sure that you’re using an updated email address. Any of you out there that have an old AOL email address, do you know what that tells the employer? It says that, Hey, I signed up for this address when the internet was new in 1991 and I’m not going to change. So that is not the message that you want to give a prospective employer. It’s such a good idea to have a brand new email address for your job search anyway. Think of your current personal inbox. It is probably a mess of spam and newsletters and things that you’ve gotten over the years, so let’s start fresh with a brand new email address. Go out and get yourself a Gmail address when you’re setting up this new address. Use some sort of a version of your first and last name with a dot or something like that, but avoid using things like John Smith 1960 or beach bum 900.

(06:13):

You want to do something that is just very professional looking for this email address and especially make sure that you’re not using anything off color. The other things that you can do is don’t include multiple phone numbers on your resume. Just list your cell number. There’s no need to list your landline. Again, that’s kind of viewed by employers like, oh, they still have a landline. I don’t know. So it’s okay if you have a landline, but just use your cell phone number, trim your address down to the city, state and zip code only. Now I see a lot of resumes that only have city and state on them, but the reason you want to put that zip code on there is because let’s say you apply for a job today and your resume is going to be dumped into a database. There are applicant tracking systems out there that will search the database based on your resume.

(07:19):

So if the employer says, I want to see everybody within a 25 mile radius of my job, the applicant tracking system is using that zip code on your resume to determine your location. So if you don’t have that zip code, they might not see you. So you want to give yourself the best chance of coming up in their searches and that’s of course if you’re looking for a fully in-person or a hybrid job. If you’re looking for a remote job, it’s not that important, but it’s still, you should have city, state and zip listed just as best practice. This is a big one, don’t include, only include the last 10 to 15 years, only include the last 10 to 15 years of your work history. I talk to people all the time and it’s a misconception that your resume has to be a total journal or diary of everything that you’ve ever done in your life.

(08:25):

That’s more for a cv, like if you’re applying for a medical position, they want to know everywhere you’ve been, everything that you’ve ever done, but your resume is only 10 to 15 years of your last most important work experience. Make sure that your skills are current. Be sure to remove any outdated software programs or programming languages from your resume or equipment that used in the past. AI is an excellent resource for this, so I just tried it as we were practicing for this webinar last week. I took a resume of someone that I had recently coached. I put it into chat GPT, and that is free for everyone to sign up to and if you haven’t done it yet, you really should, but put that resume into chat GPT and ask it questions about it. You can say, give me some examples of how I can proof this resume and it will give you recommendations.

(09:34):

When I did this last week, it even rewrote the particular resume with the recommendations in mind and I thought, well, that’s really clever. Now I could go and put this into a template and really have my language there. Of course, you never want to just copy and paste anything directly out of chat GPT, you always want to put your own spin on it and just make sure that it sounds like you, but it’s a great place to start and this will save you a ton of time when you’re trying to rewrite your resume or if you have something that’s particularly problematic that you’re trying to put into words, it’s a great resource.

Tammy Wiegand (10:21):

Excellent. Lori. I have an MSN email address, which is not as old, but it is older and it’s my personal email and when I share it with people, I have comments. People say, I’ve never heard of that one before. So great advice to make sure you have a brand new, more relevant email address. I love that. All right, when you’re coaching people, what do they tell you about their experience with interviewing?

Lori Cole (10:50):

Let’s see. We’re going to, okay, yes. Sorry about that. I was looking at the wrong slide here. So the stories I hear about interviewing over and over again is maybe if somebody is 50 plus and they walk into an interview, they report that they just feel like the interviewer’s face drops because you have to remember, you’ve put only the last 10 or 15 years of your work experience on your resume, so they may be expecting someone much younger and it’s really disheartening for the person that’s walking into those interviews to feel like the interviewer is already disappointed in them in the first 10 seconds. They feel like the interview is over in that minute, and not only do I have that for people over 50, I also hear that from people who maybe have tattoos that are visible, that have multiple piercings, maybe they’re being interviewed by somebody that they can tell that they’re disappointed in the way that that person looks.

(12:08):

But the way that you get over that is to just not let it shake your confidence if something happens like this to you. It’s really important to maintain your composure and your confidence and just remember that your experience is your superpower. I mean, if you’re approaching it like that, nobody can stop you. Your interviewers may have expected somebody that was a little bit younger or the interviewer may be younger than you are, so be ready for those types of reactions and don’t let them derail you. One of the best ways for you to feel confident is to look and dress the part. Go for something modern and professional. Try to go for something one notch above the company’s dress code, and if you don’t know what that is, then you can look at all of the pictures on their website. You can always go in and look at those pictures and try to determine what are they wearing day to day, what are they wearing for their events?

(13:28):

I always say that a guy can’t go wrong if you have a blazer and a button down shirt and for women, anything short of a cocktail dress, you’re going to be just fine. One other thing that you could do is get to one of your local, maybe higher end stores and ask the clerk to dress you. They are there to help and they will make sure to tell you what looks flattering, so that’s the time to do it. Also, be prepared for your virtual interviews. Get familiar with your video interview platforms. There is Google Meet, there’s Zoom, but be sure that you practice with that platform. The employer will send you an invite and so you’ll know in plenty of time what platform they’re using.

(14:28):

Grab a family member, grab a friend, and then test out your webcam. Test out your virtual background, test out your microphone, make sure that everything is working and make sure that you have a strong internet connection. I can’t stress the importance of your background enough. Make sure that you have a nicely curated background. If you look at Tammy’s, it’s a beautiful background with her bookshelves and everything looks great. If you can’t do that, then maybe you could do a virtual background from the platform, but just be sure that your camera is at a good location, that you’re looking at it straight on and that you’re in a very quiet and comfortable place where you’re going to feel good doing this interview. You should also be prepared for personal questions. I know that employers are not supposed to ask these, but they can come in very subtle forms like how old are your kids or how old are you?

(15:39):

Again, the employer’s not supposed to be asking those, but sometimes you have an interviewer that really isn’t trained so they don’t know. They might be trying to make small talk or they may be honestly trying to determine how old you are. You may even be asked questions about how much longer do you plan to work or why are you looking for a job at this stage in your career? And in general, the best way to respond to those questions is again, try to determine that intent. Why are they asking this? And then try to be very tactful as you answer, you can say something like, I’m very passionate about my career and I want to continue to learn and grow, and the thought of not working isn’t even on my radar at this point. And hopefully that will tell the employer, Hey, this person wants to continue to work and they want to be here or else they wouldn’t have applied for this job. Another place that AI can really help you is with your interview process. So if you go to a tool called Interview Warmup by Google, it is a phenomenal tool. It will ask you questions, it will record your answers. It will tell you if you are using filler words and things like that too much, and it will also tell you some good responses, some things that you could say to help formulate your answers. So I highly recommend that Google interview warmup tool.

Tammy Wiegand (17:34):

Excellent. Lori, you mentioned not letting anyone derail your confidence if you see that they might be disappointed, and I’ve interviewed and hired many people throughout my career and confidence is that key selling factor in your interview, so that can set the tone and set the deciding factor. That’s wonderful advice.

Lori Cole (17:53):

Yeah, people, they make their first impression within just a couple of minutes or they formulate their first impression of you in a couple of minutes. If you go in and they have a negative response and then you have a negative response, it’s probably going to snowball into a not so great interview. It’s up to you to be prepared for that and don’t let it derail you and get things back on the right track.

Tammy Wiegand (18:27):

Well said, well said. All right, moving on to salary. What are some of the best resources you can recommend for researching the salary we should ask for?

Lori Cole (18:37):

There are resources like glassdoor.com or salary.com. Another thing that you could do is make sure that you’re looking at the similar job titles in your geographic location. This is a little bit tougher to do if you’re trying to figure out what salary should be for a remote work position, but usually the rule of thumb that employers will use is they’re going to offer you salary in a range for your geographic location. Salaries can differ all over the country, and California might have a greater higher standard of living or cost of living, I’m sorry, cost of living than Indiana. So employers generally will look at where you’re located and will offer you a salary range commensurate to that location. You can also look for similar job postings for positions on the internet. So as you’re going through your job search, it might be a good idea for you to start mentally or even writing down in a spreadsheet or a Word doc, what kind of salary ranges you’re seeing so that when you’re asked about the salary range you would be willing to accept, you’ll have a much better idea of that.

(20:07):

Also, think about what you have to offer that might warrant a higher salary than the average rate because those are the things that you’re going to want to talk about in your interview, in your follow-ups, and even in your resume, in your cover letter at the initial stages of the job search process Chat, GPT can also be a really good way to research this. They can point you to the resources that they are noting. So if you say, Hey, I want to know what a project manager makes in Fort Wayne, Indiana, then it will point you and give you links to the resources that they’re pulling that data from. So I recommend try to do a thorough research job on this. Ask chat g pt, ask salary.com. Ask glassdoor.com so that you’re not just pulling from one resource because sometimes the one resource might be highly different than the other resources.

(21:17):

And I can tell you that employers will also do compensation studies. So if they have a job that’s hard to fill, they will contract us sometimes to do a comp study. And we have some tools outside of what I’ve just mentioned, that will tell the employers, Hey, based on what this person’s years of experience are, geographic location and job titles, this is what this person should be making. The other thing I want you to be aware of is just be realistic that you may not make the same salary that you were making at your previous employer, especially if you have more experience or qualifications than the job requires, but doesn’t mean you can’t still leverage those qualifications. I guess keep in mind that if you are with an employer for a long time and you’re making some great money, then you’re probably getting paid for your institutional knowledge, like the knowledge you have of that company, the way things work, the different positions you’ve had in that company, the different departments you’re familiar with, and when you’re going to a new employer, you don’t have those experiences that you can list for their company.

(22:42):

So they might not feel like that institutional knowledge is worth as much to them. Now, they’ll love your industry knowledge, but it’s just the knowledge of that institution, that company that you’re probably getting paid a little bit higher for. One of the things, and this isn’t on the slide, but I do want to talk about it because this comes up so much for people who are in the 50 plus zone here. A lot of people will just retire a cold Turkey and they will spend a few years out in retirement and then say, I am so bored. I need to do something and I want to get back. I want to use my brain, I want to use my knowledge and my skillset, and I want to get back to doing what I did before I retired. But they also want to pop back in at the same salary, and that is really hard to do, especially if you have out of the market for three or four years.

(23:49):

So what I would recommend to you as you’re looking ahead to your future is the people that I have talked to that I think have done this brilliantly is that they’ve used a step down method. So that means that they’re stepping down maybe the number of hours or days they work in a week, they’re stepping down their responsibility and they’re doing this over a long period of time. That really helps to ease you into retirement both psychologically and financially. And it also is a great thing for your employer because you are still providing support and your knowledge and all that institutional knowledge that we talked about before. It’s just great for the employer and for the candidate. So as you think about those things down the road, think about this step down method because it is starting to be more popular. And then the last thing on this slide is that when you get a compensation package offer and always get that offer in writing, if it’s not in writing, it’s not a real offer.

(25:04):

You have to be able to print it out. You need to be able to look at it, you need to be able to compare it to maybe some other offers that you’re going to get. So look at that total compensation package, look at the PTO, look at the holidays, look at what they’re going to put in your 401k. Look at the salary of course as part of that. But you have to look at the package as a whole and not just pull out and say, well, the salary’s not as great, but hey, are they putting 10% into your 401k? That’s huge. I mean, those would be really great numbers. I recently talked to somebody, they were getting 15% match for their 401k. I’ve never heard of it. I said, are you sure? This is phenomenal. That’s a great number. And they were positive that it was going to be a 15% match. So not saying that you should try to leverage your position for that, but a lot of times companies just have a very set match that they’ll do, but that’s phenomenal. So look for little things like that. Maybe they’ll say that you have a wonderful six week off PTO package. You take that into consideration too.

Tammy Wiegand (26:34):

Yeah, those are great points. Lori. I know when I was changing career paths, the option for remote work was really appealing to me and I was willing to take a lower pay salary for that option. Taking time to reflect and then determine what really matters. It can give you a different perspective and sometimes a different trajectory.

Lori Cole (26:54):

Absolutely.

Tammy Wiegand (26:55):

Excellent. All right. I’ve heard that LinkedIn is a job seekers digital billboard. How can we make the most of it?

Lori Cole (27:03):

Well, you make sure that you look like you’re tech savvy when you are, including in your contact information at the top of your resume. Include your LinkedIn URL and make sure it’s one of those tiny URLs. There’s a way to do that in LinkedIn and you can Google that, but make sure it’s a tiny URL that you can put into your resume. Some people want to include their Twitter profile. If your Twitter is more of a professional talking about professional things, then absolutely include your Twitter profile. And this is also the point where I want to say make sure that you’re locking down all your other profiles, like if you have Facebook or Instagram or anything that employers might want to take a look at. If you are sharing some personal opinions on there, sharing personal pictures, employers really don’t need to see that. As long as your LinkedIn is up to date and you have that online presence there, that should speak for itself.

(28:17):

So while we’re talking about the LinkedIn profile, let’s talk about some things that you should do. Your photo should be a current photo. It should be professional looking and absolutely not a selfie. So don’t take your camera and do those selfies or don’t use a picture that somebody just took of you at a wedding with three other people and then just cut your little head out of that picture. That does not look good. And you have the tools to do these photos. Any smartphone right now. We’ll take some wonderful pictures. I just took some pictures for my granddaughter’s high school graduation invitations, and we just went to the state park. We did a photo shoot with it in portrait mode, and they turned out fabulous. So you can do the same thing, grab a friend, grab a family member, maybe go to a location downtown.

(29:18):

It can be either in or out, indoors or outdoors and just start taking pictures. Take a hundred pictures because there’s very few of ‘em that you’re going to come back and say, oh, well, that’s the one. Everybody’s always so critical of themselves. So make sure that you get enough pictures so that you have a good choice. And then crop that pictures. Use the tool on your phone and just put that photo into your LinkedIn. Make sure that you have an updated haircut. If you have glasses, make sure that those are updated. Make sure that your clothing is updated, the business attire that you’re going to interview in. I have a friend that calls it her interview uniform, so that’s the right thing to have. You need to look energetic, you need to look, and this isn’t just for people over 50, this is for anybody. You need to look energetic. You need to look like somebody that can handle the stress of that job and the hours that are required.

(30:32):

Again, we’ve talked about your resume, not showing every single job you’ve ever done, but your LinkedIn profile should closely match your resume. So if you’re only going 10 to 15 years back on your resume, do the same with your LinkedIn profile. You want it to match as closely as possible. If you’re a blogger, then go ahead and start blogging on LinkedIn. But if you’re not a blogger, then there are tons of groups that you can find and join those groups and then join those conversations. There will be people who will post something every day and you can start joining in on that conversation. Again, if you don’t know what to say, you might be able to use AI to say, well, what would be a good response to this post? But get in there, join those groups, have people see your name, and LinkedIn is a place where you can find networking opportunities because honestly, most people still find a job through networking.

(31:47):

When you think back through your career, and I know when I think back through mine, the majority of my jobs I’ve gotten because I’ve networked with somebody or I’ve gone into a company and they said, well, we don’t have really a job for you, but we’re going to make one up. We don’t want to let your skillset go, so we’re going to make one up. So that’s really a good feeling. So go out there, get some informational interviews, start talking to people that work in the companies where you would like to work and just ask them for an informational interview. We have a great template in our resource center on iHire that is a template for how to ask for those interviews. So you can do it by phone, you can do it by email. And it’s really weird because we’re all from the time where you could just, you have your resume, you walk into an employer, you drop your resume off. Sometimes the HR manager would be right there, they talk to you on the spot, or they would schedule an interview and you just can’t do that anymore. So using LinkedIn is about the closest thing that you can get to that.

(33:12):

Also develop a personal brand statement, just a few sentences that describe who you are, what you do, why you do it, and what makes you unique. That is also, I think an elevator pitch or just that personal brand statement is always something really good for you to have so that you’re succinct so that when you’re in these networking opportunities or going out to a chamber of commerce after hours or something like that, when somebody asks you what you do, you have that very succinct answer that explains who you are.

Tammy Wiegand (33:54):

Excellent. Yes, that’s what I learned it was called was the elevator pitch.

Lori Cole (33:59):

Yeah, elevator pitch is what we’re, yeah, yeah, what you wouldn’t say to somebody if you were in an elevator with them.

Tammy Wiegand (34:07):

Exactly. Exactly. All right. And on that note, our final topic is all about developing your personal brand.

Lori Cole (34:16):

So when you’re marketing yourself, instead of focusing on your entire career, determine which aspects of your career align best with the position that you’re applying for, and you’ll want to highlight those skills and experiences and achievements. So I’ve recently looked at a person’s resume and it is a three pager and it looks like is an all-in-one resume. They’ve included things from three different areas, completely diverse areas that they’ve worked in on their resume, and they’re trying to send that one resume to every job. Well, that’s really not going to connect well with the recruiter looking at that resume because they’re going to be saying, well, what does this person want to do? Do they want to do retail? Do they want to do technology or do they want to do real estate? And those were the areas that this person had had. So I think the best thing for you to do is if you’re not quite sure which direction you want to go in and career clarity is super important, I would recommend that you have that before you start your job search.

(35:34):

But if you’re just not really sure then, and if you could go in two or three different directions, then have a resume tailored to each one of those career paths. And on that resume, put the target experience, the experience that you’ve had in that industry. Put the highlights, put the accomplishments, and make sure that you’re asking for the appropriate salary range for that particular position in that industry. The other thing for you to think about is what are your unique superpowers? We know your experience is one of them, but what problems have you been able to solve for your previous employers and what problems can you solve for your next employer? You’ll always want to emphasize your ability to collaborate with different types of people and age groups, and this only helps to add to the diversity of backgrounds within a company. It adds to the team’s experience and their points of view.

(36:46):

So it’s great to have somebody maybe with a little bit more experience and wisdom on the team so that you can tap into that knowledge and employers do recognize and appreciate that. Also, emphasize your desire to continually learn and grow, especially when it comes to technology. Now, if you think you might be rusty in technology, I recently coached a man that said, I don’t feel like my Excel skills are where they should be. So he just went out. And on the iHire site, there is something called educational resources where we go out and aggregate all these courses that are called MOOCs, which is a massive online open course, and some of them are free, some of them are paid. Usually you’ll see it paid if you want to get an actual certificate. But you can take those courses and you can update your experience in, I’m going to say almost any area that you want to update it on.

(37:58):

And then if you take one of those courses, make sure that you’re adding that to your resume. So replace maybe some of your more outdated skills with these newer skills. If you’ve taken an Excel course, if you’ve taken a programming course in a different language, if you’ve taken a design course, if you’ve taken social media courses, social media is big for everybody right now. So the more that you can do with that and show that you’re continually learning and growing, that will really help your case. And then you also want to showcase that you are nimble and flexible, that you are willing to go with the flow that you are willing to do the job that they’re asking you to do, and that you’re not stuck in this rigid place where you will only do this one thing.

Tammy Wiegand (38:59):

Excellent. Thank you, Lori. All right, let’s jump into some Q and A, see what we have here.

Lori Cole (39:07):

Oh my goodness, I just saw the number of questions we have. We know we’re not going to be able to get to all of them, but we’re going to do our best here.

Tammy Wiegand (39:16):

All right. Well, let’s start with the first one. How do you respond to you are overqualified? Will you be bored?

Lori Cole (39:26):

I think that the way I would answer that is if I thought I would be bored, I would not have applied for this position. I don’t think I’ll be bored at all because I’m very excited about what I would be able to do and then name a couple of the things that they listed in the job description. What gets you pumped up about that job? What got you excited about it in the first place? So I think that that’s a very easy question to get over and move on to why you’re qualified for that position.

Tammy Wiegand (40:03):

Excellent. All right. The next question, what if dates are required on the application?

Lori Cole (40:12):

Okay, so I know that this happens, especially when you’re filling out the online applications. You are going to be required to put in some dates for some things. Now, I’m not saying you have to put in your entire job history, but again, try to match that application with your resume for the last 10 to 15 years. But if you do have to put in a date for your year, you graduated college, just do that. Just honesty is the best policy. You can’t fudge on that. It’s going to come out in the background check anyway. So yeah, put the year that you graduated and then if they have any questions about that, you can answer those questions in the interview. And if you are afraid that they’ve used that against you and you don’t even get called for an interview, my thought is that they have done you a huge favor because if they’re going to judge you based on your age, if they’re not going to call you based on your age, you don’t want to work for that company or that culture anyway. So look at it as a blessing in disguise if you don’t get a call and especially if you feel like they are judging you on your age.

Tammy Wiegand (41:40):

Great point. Great point. Along the same lines, the next question, if you take out the college graduation dates, won’t that be a red flag that you’re trying to hydrate?

Lori Cole (41:54):

No, not necessarily. Especially on your resume, because we don’t recommend that anybody add their college graduation dates on their resume unless they’ve got their degree in the last five years. So this is just advice for anybody no matter your age, just don’t put down when you graduated from college unless it was in the last five years. And same thing for your certifications. I’ll see people say, well, I didn’t put my college graduation on, but I did put this certification I got in 1988. Don’t do that. It defeats the purpose of not putting the college graduation on there. So if you have a certificate, it should be good enough for them to know that you’ve got this special certification and they don’t need to know what year it was that you received it in.

Tammy Wiegand (42:56):

All right, great. Next one, how can I convince the interviewer that I’m still capable of learning new technology?

Lori Cole (43:07):

I think that as you’re talking about that in the interview process, I feel like this is where those MOOCs can come in if you have taken some classes, if you have that on your resume, they’re going to see that you know how to use these certain types of technology that may be relevant to that job. So definitely as you take those courses, put that on your resume and that just will help bolster your credibility, I think.

Tammy Wiegand (43:46):

Excellent. All right. The next one, what types of software programs should you list on your resume as skills and which ones are considered irrelevant?

Lori Cole (43:59):

Okay, so everybody lists Microsoft Office and that’s good, but sometimes as you’re doing these keywords, we have something called iCore resume match. Sometimes if you put the term Microsoft office on your resume and the job description actually asked for Microsoft Excel or Microsoft PowerPoint, the applicant system isn’t going to pick up on Microsoft Office because it’s going to say it’s not a word for word match. So do your best when you are customizing those resumes to match the keywords in the job description. So if somebody is asking for Microsoft Word, put Microsoft Word in your skills, if they’re asking for Microsoft Office, put Microsoft Office. But if you just say Microsoft Office in general, a real life person looking at your resume of course is going to put two and two together and say, oh, okay, well they have that. But a robot, an applicant tracking system looking at your resume may not put that together. Things that you shouldn’t put on your resume. I’m trying to think of older programs. I think Cobalt. Cobalt is an older program, Lotus 1, 2 3. I can remember that being popular back in the day, and I don’t see that on resumes anymore. So anything that was you used fresh out of college that you don’t use now, get that off your resume and reserve that keyword space for other things that might be more pertinent to the job.

Tammy Wiegand (45:54):

Fantastic. All right. Lawrence wants to know, do you recommend against using an EDU email address?

Lori Cole (46:09):

I wouldn’t. Just from the standpoint of I recommend that you set up a brand new Gmail account for this job search, so you might have, I don’t know how long your.edu email address has been, you’ve been using that, but I wouldn’t just go ahead and set up a brand new one. It is not going to hurt you if you do it, but I just think it looks more professional unless you want the employer to know that you’ve recently been in school, but I don’t know how long you can use those.edu after school. Is that something that stays with you all the time? I don’t know.

Tammy Wiegand (47:00):

I’m not sure.

Lori Cole (47:01):

Yeah, so I’ll have to look that up.

Tammy Wiegand (47:05):

All right. From Lance, how do you showcase experience and skills over 15 years old if they are highly relevant to the role you’re applying to?

Lori Cole (47:17):

So that’s a great question. I would do it in probably a hybrid resume format. So as you get to the point where you have a lot more experience in your career, you can use these hybrid resume formats where you can still list out the last 10 or 15 years of the jobs that you’ve had, but then there’s also, but it doesn’t really concentrate on your work history that much concentrates more on what have been your highlights, what have you done in your career, what different areas have you worked in? So that hybrid resume focuses more on that sort of a format instead of focusing so much on that chronological experience type of resume that we’re all used to. The other thing that you can do is, and I see this quite a lot with the professionally written resumes, they’ll put on another area that say additional experience.

(48:26):

I recently worked with somebody who had been at Boeing for a very long period of time, and Boeing is a great name to have on your resume. So they were able to put that in additional experience. They didn’t put the years, they just said, I think that he ended up listing two or three jobs under additional experience, and Boeing was one of those jobs. Also, if you are in doubt about your resume, have it professionally written, if you have the resources to do that, you’re probably looking at between 350 and $400 for it. If I were in the job market right now, that is the very first thing I would do is hire a professional resume writer. Even though I feel like I know that I could do it myself, I just need a different set of eyes on it. I need somebody to say, no, this is the experience you should be showcasing here, and it will just take so much of a load off of your shoulders knowing that somebody else is writing a professional resume for you. And you won’t have to worry about if you’re not getting calls. Well, is it my resume? Should I be tweaking my resume? Should I be doing something different? It just takes that question out of the way because those professional writers know what they’re doing. We have a professional resume writing service here at iHire. We’d love for you to use us, but there’s also other ones out there, but highly recommend that you get that professional resume written.

Tammy Wiegand (50:07):

Very nice. All right, last question. This is more about the interview process. So from Cheryl, is there a way to subtly inform the interviewer that we plan to work for another 10 plus years if they don’t ask, but we suspect that they may guess on that factor on their own decision?

Lori Cole (50:31):

I just don’t know how you would word it. I think that you would want to carefully word it if you want to work that in just by saying, Hey, this isn’t even on my radar right now. Or I guess also people can look much younger than their actual age, so if they don’t bring something like that up, I guess I wouldn’t volunteer it because you’re not really there to talk about your plans for retirement. You’re there to talk about your plans for your continued career and your work history.

Tammy Wiegand (51:15):

Excellent. All right, everyone, that’s all we have time for today. We appreciate everyone who submitted their questions and took time out of their busy day to talk about this important topic. And another thank you to our amazing host, Lori Cole. She’s absolutely fantastic and a wealth of knowledge, so we appreciate your time, Lori.

Lori Cole (51:36):

Thank you. If you haven’t, thanks everybody for joining. Yes, sorry.

Tammy Wiegand (51:39):

No, no, it’s fine. And if you haven’t already, click on the Build My Resume widget on your screen. Our new tool will build your resume from scratch or modify an existing resume on file. You’ll get AI powered recommendations for your resume summary skills, job descriptions and accomplishments. It’s that easy. So keep an eye on your inbox tomorrow for an on-demand recording of today’s webinar, and we’ll be in touch soon with an invite to our next premium member webinar. I hope you all have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much for joining us.

Lori Cole (52:13):

Thank you everybody.

Tammy Wiegand (52:15):

Thanks.