Hiding age turns popular among older job seekers

By Stephanie Armour
USA Today

The tough job market and rising concerns about age discrimination are prompting graying job seekers to try to mask their age.

Candidates are omitting dates or work experience from their resumes. Others are taking more drastic steps, such as coloring their hair or getting plastic surgery.

Sixty-three percent of job seekers would leave a date off their resume to hide their age, according to a survey by online job board HotJobs.com. Nearly 20 percent said they would consider plastic surgery to improve job prospects.

One reason for the image concern: Age discrimination cases filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hit 19,921 last year — a more than 40 percent jump from 14,141 in 1999.

Job-seeking tactics on the rise:

• Plastic surgery. "They've been laid off for five or six months and want to do this before the next round of interviews," says plastic surgeon Elbert Cheng in California.

More than half of face-lift patients are ages 51 to 64, says the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The number of men seeking procedures that make them look younger also has jumped: More than 130,000 had Botox treatments in 2002, up 25 percent from 2001.

• Resume fudging. Some career strategists push job applicants to omit dates from resumes. Career coach Kathy Sanborn routinely advises clients to omit graduation dates and list only the last 10 years of their work history.

Those tactics can backfire.

"We are seeing more and more prospective employees trying to hide their ages on resumes," says Scott Testa, chief operating officer at Mindbridge Software. "That's one more reason to delete the resume from the pile. If they hide that, what else are they hiding?"

• Hair coloring. Sales of Just For Men hair color rose more than 15 percent in the year ended June 28 versus two years ago. A Just For Men survey found more than 75 percent of respondents think looking younger gives them an edge in the job market.