I have a friend who is also a woman of a certain age and she has changed jobs several times the last few years, always improving her circumstances, its impressive! Like MaineLonghorn, I work predominantly on the phone and sound young, so am unaware of any prejudice; however, if I had to go get a new job, that might be rough.
Man, I wish I had a job where I worked remotely! Unfortunately, you can’t be a research chemist and work from home (unless you have an amazing fume hood in your basement.)
I agree that the age thing is real - and it’s even worse in fields like mine where the demand for workers is already kind of low. There aren’t a lot of people hiring synthetic chemists right now, and as I have discovered, many of the jobs that do exist favor young, mobile, cheaply-paid people. Luckily for me, my boss is an old supervisor from a previous employer who values my skill set…and who doesn’t care that I’m 50+ years old.
Working remotely was great until we had to move for my husbands job. Now it’s quite lonely especially since we moved the same year I became an empty nester.
Wouldn’t leaving out dates of degrees or past jobs make it obvious that you are trying to hide your age, and those who practice age discrimination against older people will do so anyway on that basis?
General advice these days is just to list the last 10-15 years of experience with associated years. Experience prior to that you can just list briefly if relevant but without the years. Also for education you don’t normally put a graduation date anymore.
I haven’t personally used their services, but AARP has programs to help older workers find jobs. It’s not a golden bullet, but they likely have strategies learned over the years that individuals may not have. https://www.aarp.org/work/?intcmp=GLBNAV-PL-WOR-WOR
Anomander, that is what I was advised by a recruiter who was helping me look for that new job and the reason why I removed all that “stuff”. It’s all out there on the internet if some HR person just HAS to know how old I am! She made me understand that with so many people who apply for jobs they are looking for a reason to exclude resumes,so don’t hand it to them because age can stick out on resumes loaded with jobs and graduation years and sometimes there is an general assumption that if you are old you cost too much all before you even get to a phone screen or anyone even asks you what salary you are looking for.
I would caution against assuming that the reason you can’t find a job is because of ageism.
It is hard to find a job, period. You are competing with others and there needs to be a compelling reason to hire you.
It may be the case that being older means you cost more or, because you are older, you do not, in the view of the hiring company, have the “fresh” skill set they are looking for.
You just want to make sure that you are thinking strategically as you look for a job, and don’t let yourself give up because you have gray hair.
I’m speaking from the vantage point of someone who found a job and returned to full-time work at age 54 after being home for 10 + years – it wasn’t easy, but it can be done.
In my opinion having the skill set goes without saying but I have migrated over the last ten years to a technology based career so it’s doubly important. It would be much harder for a person to be older and trying to enter a job based on skills from a decade or more ago. I have a highly credentialed family member who stayed at home for a decade and had to “drop way down” when she re-entered the workforce but also then zoomed back up quickly to the level position she left off and then some, but she had to bite the bullet to re-enter the workforce in her mid-forties even though she had kept up her credentials.
The decades-old tradition or expectation of employer provided medical insurance probably causes incentive (at the company HR and finance level) not to want to have an older work force, or view an older employee as more expensive than a younger one with the same pay.
http://www.healthcostinstitute.org/files/Age-Curve-Study_0.pdf
Obviously, this is not a good thing with respect to age discrimination.
The company I was with for almost 30 years moved all accounting positions to lower cost areas of the country and downsized all of us that were not located in these areas 3 years ago. I have more than 30 years of accounting experience working in the operations side of accounting versus the corporate side. I redid my almost 30 year old resume (typed on a typewriter!) updated LinkedIn and started applying for jobs. The first interview I was called in for was by a recruiting firms that places senior accounting staff. I have a lot of experience working on large (and small) accounting systems and the company they interviewed me for wanted someone with the specific accounting system experience which I had. I was offered a job from that first company I interviewed with and received a 10% bump in salary at 55. I have now been with the company for 3 years and don’t plan on going anyplace for as long as they will have me. I realize that I was very lucky and I hit it off well with the CEO and CFO of the small engineering firm I am now working for. The recruiter that got me the initial interview still calls me from time to time to see if I am interested in other positions he is hiring for.
Age matters for both male and female. I worked for someone who was very smart and competent. He was let go 2 years ago and has not found a permanent position. He is working as a contractor.
I reinvented myself 5 years ago. It meant having to learn some new technology and skills. It wasn’t hard for me because it was always of interest to me. I was lucky that I got in the beginning of this technology before it took off. In the last few years I’ve changed my jobs few times because my business can be kind of volatile, but I still get recruiters contacting me through Linkedin.
I do make a point of keeping up my looks by coloring my hair, getting facials, yes, and getting botox too. 
I also do not list all of my work experience.
I think it is a shame employers do not want to hire people of certain age. I have better focus of my job now than when I was raising my kids. Instead of having to rush from one appt to another for my kids, I have more time to focus on my work.
Few years ago I hired a man who was probably in his late 40 or early 50s. He was working as a contractor for few years. He turned out to be one of my hardest working employees. Few months into the job, he brought his teenage son to work. He didn’t see me at first, I saw him showing his son what he was doing and sounded very proud.
Great idea, @intparent
@fendrock I am highly skilled in my field. Around age 50, I suddenly had a heck of a time even getting called for first interviews for contracts. One guy said after a phone interview that he was worried that I didn’t have enough energy. Holy cow! I have flaws, but low energy isn’t one of them. No one who has ever met me would say so.
Once I made the changes to remove some experience from my resume, drop the years (eg, 1991 - 1993) altogether (just put lengths of assignments, like “18 months”) and order it by relevance to the contract I was looking at, and took my college graduation years off (left the degrees, just not the years), my phone started ringing again. It is real. Of course there CAN be other reasons. But it sure worked for me to mask my age to get to the first interview.
@intparent I would suggest that if it is “true” ageism, you still won’t get hired, even if you get the first interview.
I know you don’t want to believe it — but ageism is keeping them from offering the first interview at all.
My place of employment where I’ve been for 28 years was sold and purchased by another entity in December. At that time, I asked to be laid off because the benefit pass-through was not comparable (loss of 401K and change of hours) but it was denied vehemently. Fast forward to April 1st and my hours were cut in half d/t scheduling to census which is nose-diving. I started collecting part-time unemployment and searching desperately for a new job. Its hard to hide your age when your place of employment start date is 28 years ago. I’m having a really hard time finding anything that pays equivalent (and I’m not in a rocket science position) or decent benefits. I’ve asked to be laid off again full time and met with another refusal. Its only a matter of time before I lose my health insurance. The only job offers I’m getting are in LTC and that is a dead end. Everything is going to home care but because most of those companies are new they are hiring young kids right out of college for less than $40K/year and minimal benefits. More depressing is the micro-managing of a boss that could potentially be 30 years younger than I am. Even with the 28 year job, I need to list my degree from the early 80s 
Its a lose-lose.
I got a new job when I was 62. It was a horrible job and I left after two years, but it sure as hell paid well.
I took off “old” jobs – pre-1991 – and had very relevant experience for the job. I also look much younger than I am.
That said, years ago I had an executive recruiter ask me what year I graduated from college. I knew full well that was going to deep six my chances but I was stunned and so I answered him anyway. In retrospect, I should have said, “I’d be pleased to answer that if you can tell me why it’s relevant.”
Still ticks me off big time.
“That said, years ago I had an executive recruiter ask me what year I graduated from college. I knew full well that was going to deep six my chances but I was stunned and so I answered him anyway. In retrospect, I should have said, “I’d be pleased to answer that if you can tell me why it’s relevant.””
The unfortunate thing is either response would deep six your chances. The latter at least would have been more enjoyable.
Do folks feel the ageism has gotten worse or was it always there and we’re more cognizant of it now that we’re “of a certain age”? Is this a universal issue or are there other countries that place more value on older, experienced workers? I do think American culture is very celebratory of youth and doesn’t respect age even away from the job market.
I do think the whole issue speaks to another reason to save aggressively early on to provide for more flexibility later.
As an attorney, I can’t take off the year I was admitted to the Bar, so I actually seem a year older than I actually am because I skipped a year in school and am a year ahead. I can also only leave out my first job of 9 months but that just gets me to 1984 and would leave me with literally 2 jobs on my resume. If I lose this job, I will probably just do per diem work and take my pensions.