Improving How You Sell Yourself To Beat Employer Ageism

Many age 40, 50, and 60 job seekers job seekers feel they're being discriminated against because of age.

But more often, the real reason is because they don't realize that they're underselling themselves.

The good news is that this is something you can fix, once you recognize and learn how to improve how you sell yourself.

1. All Experience Is Not Equal (Responsibilities Too): Experience/responsibilities doesn't display you have what a hiring manager needs, because you haven't communicated if it was the right or wrong experience, if it was good or bad experience, if you were a success or failure in your past responsibilities. There's a big difference between a hugely successful CEO with 10 years' experience vs an average CEO. It's the same for admins, accountants, salespeople, marketing, finance, engineering/production, IT, customer service, at experienced staff, management, director, VP or C-level.
2. Presenting Yourself As Good As A Younger Candidate "But More Experienced" Sells You Poorly: Because most job seekers have been advised and taught to sell themselves as qualified, when you're over 40 this turns into "I'm just as good as other candidates, just more experienced". You think that's a good thing ... but from the employer's perspective, a cheaper candidate is just as good as you, but less expensive. To overcome this, you need to recognize that employers perceive you as more expensive when you're over 40, so they expect more of what matters to them.
3. Being Qualified Isn't Enough: In 2025, employers expect many qualified candidates competing for their jobs (5-10 qualified candidates competing for each interview spot, or 50-100 competing for 10 spots). So being qualified makes you average - Being in your 40's, 50's or 60's and selling yourself as qualified in your resume and interviews makes you look too expensive.
4. Qualified Makes You A Higher Risk: Few hiring managers take risks, but make "safe hires". When they do take risks, it's usually on a candidate with a rare skill set that solves a specific hiring manager problem, or because they know the candidate personally. To hiring managers, when you appear qualified, this presents a safer decision to hire a candidate who is also qualified, but is less expensive (and less experienced).

From an employer's perspective, are you proving success to a hiring manager who doesn't know you and hasn't worked at your past employers?

Or are you just presenting yourself as qualified?

If you're not sure, you're not alone ... almost no job seekers know how to prove their success well (surprisingly, salespeople are often the worst at it). GenX and Baby Boomers struggle with it more than GenZ and Millennials, due to changes in how these generations were raised.

During my next free Resume Webinar, Beating Job Search Ageism, I'll show you different resume/interview/job search strategies that will help you sell yourself more effectively. I'll teach you how to make age your superpower and employers will clearly see that you're worth higher compensation than younger candidates. No matter what your compensation requirements, I'll show you how to prove to employers that you're a steal, compared to the impact you can deliver.

When we're done with that, I'll teach you other ways to overcome age bias, so you can accelerate your job search so much, you can find your next job faster, easier and more successfully in 2025 when you're 40/50/60+.

Join me Thursday morning 2/27/25 at 11:00am ET/8:00am PT or Friday morning 2/28/25 at 11:00am ET/8:00am PT for my free Resume Webinar - Beating Job Search Ageism (enroll at https://x.resumewebinar.com/Registration at no charge) to learn how to overcome job search ageism and find your next job faster in 2025.

#jobs #resume #career #careers #ageism