Pro tip: stop putting your graduation year on your resume if it's been over 5 years

I see this mistake all the time when I'm helping friends with their resumes. Just last month, a buddy asked me to look over his resume and he had his graduation year on there from 2008. In my experience, that's just asking for age bias whether people admit it or not. I've been a delivery driver for about 8 years now and I've picked up resumes from office buildings where recruiters straight up told me they toss ones with old dates. It makes no sense to keep that info unless you're fresh out of school. Why give them a reason to guess your age when they shouldn't even care? Has anyone else noticed this or had a recruiter mention it to you?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_rose17d ago

Oh man, that's such a good point! I've actually had a recruiter tell me once that they look at graduation years to figure out if someone's been in the industry long enough to know their stuff, which is total nonsense. Like, why does it matter if you graduated in 2010 versus 2015 if you've got the skills for the job? So my question for you is, what do you think is the best way to handle it if your degree is from a long time ago but it's still relevant to the job, do you just leave it off entirely or mention it without the year?

zara57216d ago

Classic. So they're basically age profiling now.