Should You Put Dates On Your Résumé?

Recently, a friend of mine asked me to look at his résumé for him as he is applying for jobs in a state he would like to move to. It looked great, except for the fact that he left off the year he graduated with his Bachelor's degree in Physics. Obviously, this is a considerable achievement, but with no date, it left room to doubt whether he completed his degree. When asked why he didn't include the date of graduation, he said that another recruiter friend had told him to take it off, citing "ageism works both ways" as the reason why.

This struck me as bizarre. Not that ageism can work both ways; hiring managers might have biases towards older or younger professionals, but because my friend is 30 years old. He's almost in the middle of his life as a working professional, neither too green nor too senior. I told him as much but said if he was still concerned about ageism he should at least put "completed" or "awarded" under his degree so prospective employers know he completed it.

Since then I have been noticing this résumé trick more and more, oftentimes combined with other moves like leaving off employers prior to five years, leaving dates off employment history, or just putting in a "Past Employer" section that lists previous employers without the dates.

From my understanding the strategy for these tactics is to get the application and résumé through initial screenings, landing an interview where it's possible to better sell a skillset and better posture against any misconceptions regarding age.

There are a lot of strategies towards eliminating biases on the side of the employer as well, and not just regarding age. Companies as famous as Google practice Blind Recruitment ; basically non-bias résumé presentations where the candidate's name and other information is scrubbed completely off the document to avoid any bias over gender or race or ethnicity. Amazon has a notorious interview style where many times you do not even interview with the person you are going to be directly working for, making it impossible for them to leverage any bias they may have.

There is of course nothing wrong with trying to avoid discrimination in job seeking or bias in hiring, and I completely understand fudging it on paper to get the interview. There are loads of studies that show there is real discrimination that occurs when people think the résumé they're viewing belongs to a person of color , a woman , an older person , a younger person , etc. Still, all of these things seem limited in what they can actually accomplish, however worthy the endeavor. At some point, hiring, if not work itself, becomes tactile. You will inevitably be subjected to a person's bias.

It seems obvious to state, but if you can mask your age on your résumé, it's certainly not possible to in an interview. Even if you're interviewing at a company deploying Amazon's model you could eventually show up to work with a manager who thinks you're too old or too young to do the job. If your name was scrubbed off your résumé because your prospective manager might be biased or bigoted in some other way, what happens when you show up to the interview or to work? Who wants to start a new job facing obstacles like this on day one?

Work is a social and collaborative endeavor, we all know this and it's why our personal beliefs and biases show up in hiring practices all the time - for better or worse. Someone with a rare and proficient set of hard skills could be rejected in an interview for exhibiting toxic behavior, or for just having a sense of humor. Employment, and subsequently hiring, cannot be distilled to skillsets and task completion alone. There is an entire universe of considerations that will always exist outside of a checked box.

So then what is to be done? I suggest we stop hiding. Employers need to take real steps to address unhealthy biases and promote diversity in the workplace and hiring practices. There are lots of organizations and professionals out there whose whole job is working with employers to do this, many of the strategies go well beyond hiding prospective employees from a biased manager until the moment they start. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with Blind Recruitment, but there is far more work to be done.

As for the job seeker, you of course have to be honest on job applications, but if you need a job and you feel your résumé is causing you to be drummed out of consideration for one reason or another and you need to change it, who am I to tell you not to? I would, however, consider the long-term benefits of working for someone who would not have even remotely considered you had they known your name was longer or that you are a certain age.