@JoanncN227203,
All humans are ignorant. I will provide my own view of the hiring process as a community service. Hopefully, you will be understand the system and exploit its weaknesses. It is better to know the rules than to be the best qualified. The best qualified often never gets past the computer stage of the weeding out process.
As the job market tightened up they had to make radical changes. The person who does the hiring is busy like everyone in business these days. 20-30 years ago they might have seen as many as 20 resumes to fill a position. Now it is usually 5. There are maybe 1,000 applicants for that job. How do you get 1,000 down to 5? This is done in personnel. These are probably some of the least technical persons in the company. They usually have a communications degree. They need to use non-technical methods to weed out applicants. A computer application will eliminate the first 900. HR has a detailed description of the job. They use that in the position posting and use it to eliminate applicants. Some grunt adds the job description to the application. It breaks the description into key words. The resumes are scanned into text and the text is saved in a database. They are graded on a key word search. If a key word is calculus and your resume has that word 3 times you get 3 points. They also have negative key words. You have one of those you are disqualified. The last time I searched @ALO.com was one, ‘references are available on request’ were 2 negative key word/phrase. Note neither have any impact on your skill level. The top 100 will be reviewed by a grunt. I bought one a few drinks to learn her tricks of the trade. She would do 2 passes. The first pass she just looked at the general appearance. If there were pictures, scented paper, expensive paper or eye-catching fonts were thrown out without reading a word. The next run did they appear professional. Did they conform to some kind of resume standard? She would eliminate 80 with very little reading. “Reading takes too much time.” She is likely too stupid to understand the resume anyway. The remaining 20 would go to the staffing manager. They read enough to toss the other 15. BTW the staffing manager has no real clue of what is needed for the job any more than you could pick a good neuro surgeon. Only 5 get seen by someone who knows a good fit when they see one. They will start with 3 of the 5 for interviews. If they don't pan out the interview the other 2.
Just to provide a sample of how flawed the key word search is…
A position was opened for a super advanced mathematician. The actual inventor of the math got the Nobel prize for this. He applied and didn’t get an interview. No human saw his resume to discover he had a Nobel prize. He didn’t have algrabra on his resume. This was a flaw of the job description but the person writing the discription doesn’t understand the consequences of putting algrabra as part of the description and they were too busy to ponder that. No one mentions that they can read or write in their resume either. Often the best candidate never makes it to the top 20.
My suggestion is to read several articles on key words before you update your resume. That will make or break you. I have a 3-4 page resume depending on margins. That is double the recommended 2 pages. I figure twice the words ought to produce twice the key word score. Mine is designed to be eye scanned fast enough the extra pages don’t matter negatively. They actually help because nothing is left out. I include a brief description of the business and what I did there. Persons who get hired into a ‘different world’ often flounder for a while. In most interviews I get asked about a particular job. That is because that was similar to what they do. They ask me some what if questions to see if I would do the right thing. Some say the description waists space but I don’t think so. No resume writer like my resume because it is a wacky hybrid. ALL the staffing managers love it so their opinion is what counts. Knowing who to trust is the hardest part of job hunting. A hint, if you don't get calls it is your resume.
What does all this have to do with age discrimination? 99.5% of the applicants are tossed for no good reason. By lying, you can make it to that .5%. Maybe the hiring manager hates old people and you are screwed but often they are far more concerned that you will not be an embarrassment to them. You have a slim chance of getting a job instead of no chance. My experience is that only 1 in 5 will hire the older more qualified person. I remember my expected manager telling me I got the job based on my interview and resume. She said no one came close then she corrected that statement that one person one was a distant second. He got the job not me.
Even if you don’t get the job you get interview practice which is very important. BTW I have over 40 pages of questions they may ask me during the interview and 2 pages of questions I might ask them. I always hand write them since I have gotten comments on my hand-written questions. Some like that a lot. They like that the questions were all written specifically for them and some are modified for them.They are gullable enough to think you pondered a great deal about their company instead that you need to pay bills.
If you can, attend job hunting classes. I had to drive an hour each way for the 3-day class but it was well worth it. Every trick you learn makes it easier and more likely you will land a job. You also can network other job hunters. For most jobs the network is key.
