A lot of things would go through your head. Oh my God, what do I do now? Where do I start? What if they think I am too old? What if I can’t find anything , then what? Well the first thing you might do is dust off your resume and get ready to get it in front of people that are hiring. One thing though, going out to get a new job isn’t the same as it was years ago, when all you needed is a clean suit, and a good attitude and poof, you have a new job. In today’s market you are going to need to polish up more then just your shoes if you plan on getting a job. Starting with blowing the dust off your resume, if your in the 40 plus crowd chances are good you have had more then one job. With that being said, you are going to need to decide from a Recruiter’s viewpoint what is going to have the most impact when they look at your resume. One thing your probably not going to want to do is chronologically list every job you have had since you were 18. One big reason your going to want to highlight jobs that your going after is Age Discrimination. Sad but true, since a lot of the jobs you apply for are going to want you to submit your resume electronically, they have no way of telling what a great fit you are by looking at your resume, and unfortunately there could be some age bias that occurs. Here are a few suggestions that I found worked.

First, avoid using a chronological resume, one that list job after job and year after year. Generally recruiters are interested in the last 10 years , this lets them know if the person is a job jumper. Another idea, don’t put down the year that you graduated from High School or College, they just want to know that you went and you graduated. Remember, most of the time your not going to be there when they look at it. Another idea for you, don’t bog your resume down with a lot of verbiage, if it’s more then two pages, think of summarizing it. A lot of resumes are scanned, Recruiters have a lot of people looking for the same job most of the time and they scan resumes for key words. When reading the ad the wrote, many times those key words are in the ad. This is what they are looking for. There are a lot of other things that can help and we will discuss this later.

One of the most important things to remember is that you are selling yourself, your valuable, you know it and with a little work your new boss will know it too. Sales is a numbers game, the more you put yourself out there, the greater your chance of landing that job.

Frank C.