By the Numbers: Pushing Back Against Workplace Age Discrimination

Age discrimination is alive and well, unfortunately. Here’s how to fight it.

O-Level Discrimination

O-level discrimination is not supposed to happen, but it does. Sometimes, prospective employees call in the big guns, like Claims Direct, to settle workplace disputes, discrimination, or injury cases that shouldn’t result in termination, but do.

However, there are ways you can fight back against ageism, and most of these ways involve making yourself an irreplaceable asset to the company.

Include Modern Technological Experience On Your CV/Resume

Your experience and technical knowledge might date you. So, you should spend a lot of time learning new skills, like including file-sharing links to your CV, setting up a website that maintains your resume, providing prospective employers with links to online videos where you demonstrate your skills.

These might mask your true age, or at the very least show that you’re competitive and capable despite your age.

Don’t Hide Work Experience, Limit It

Don’t hide work experience, but know that employers can deduce your age if you date yourself. For example, if you’re experienced in using Microsoft Office programs that are 10 or 20 years old, you don’t have to put those down on your CV.

In all likelihood, those skills will be irrelevant to your future employment and they will tip the employer off to your age and skillset.

What you can do instead is set a 5-year cutoff for your skills and work experience. Anything older than that can be treated like your “first employment.”

If you’re spending enough time refreshing your skills and learning new ones, there won’t be enough on your resume for older stuff, and your employer won’t care.

Refresh Your Skills

If you have skills that need updating, do it. Spend the time to learn a new word processing app, get familiar with online iterations of older programs, and take continuing education classes so that your knowledge is up-to-date.

It also allows you to be more truthful and relevant in your CV.

If you go back to college, or attend a trade or vocational school, and graduate with a degree similar to one you originally earned 30 years ago, you can put that down on your CV, leave off the older degree, and it looks like you’ve just graduated.

Hayden Joyce is a human resources manager. He enjoys writing about career and workplace topics. His articles are available on many career and business websites.