Why Age Matters To Hiring Managers When You’re Over 40 (and how to eliminate their concern)

Age shouldn't matter to employers - Candidates should be hired because of how well they can do the job, no matter what your age.

While age discrimination in hiring isn't legal, it still happens all the time - The reason is because age matters to hiring managers in their decision process.

And when you understand why age might matter to a hiring manager, it can help you to overcome job search ageism?more quickly.

Hiring managers have to balance two conflicting goals for every new hire they choose:

1. Stay Within Their Annual Budget: Your target hiring manager has an annual budget for the area they manage and an annual salary budget to cover the people who work for them. Going over either budget is likely to be bad for the hiring manager's career, annual bonus and raise.
2. Improving Performance: If a new hire can elevate the performance of that hiring manager's team/department/company, this is likely to be a big positive for the hiring manager's career, annual bonus and raise.

So what does this have to do with your age?

Hiring managers perceive that your compensation will be higher because you have more years of experience, due to the compounding effect of more annual raises. Hiring managers also perceive that less experienced candidates' compensation expectations will be lower.

Sure, they've asked you about past salaries and salary expectations - But because they haven't yet made you an offer, they haven't begun negotiations to see that you'll want a higher salary. They also might have to get approval from higher levels to make an offer above a predetermined budget or salary range ... so they'd have to sell the higher salary to their manager (and possibly higher levels than this).

If you were in the hiring manager's shoes, wouldn't you want to make sure that a candidate was worth the higher compensation, before asking your manager (and maybe your manager's boss) to approve the higher salary? Wouldn't you need to prove why this candidate was worth more to the employer?

And if you couldn't tell if that candidate wasn't worth the higher compensation, wouldn't you choose other candidates to interview and advance in the hiring process?

You might be thinking, that's easy ... of course you're worth it. You can run circles around a less experienced candidate and deliver far greater performance than someone 5 or 10+ years younger.

But how does a hiring manager know that you can raise performance of their team? They know what you've told them and what they've interpreted from your resume and during interviews.

The problem most age 40, 50, and 60+ job seekers face (and you're probably facing), is that your resume doesn't prove your ability to raise team performance ... even if you might think it does. But to a stranger, who doesn't know you, who has never worked with you, your resume tells that hiring manager the things you were supposed to do (responsibilities and experience), qualifications, skills, and tasks.

Almost all resumes are structured this way - It's also how career coaches and professional resume writers have been taught to advise candidates and construct resumes (your interviews give similar impressions, too).

But what it doesn't tell your reader is how well you did your job (improved performance). Maybe you've included a few examples, but most of the lines on your resume describe what you did and what you were supposed to do. Instead, you forced your reader to guess if you fulfilled these responsibilities well, poorly or at all.

And if you do this on your resume, it is highly likely you also fail to communicate much success in your interviews.

You've given that hiring manager the impression?that you'll cost more, but you fail to prove that you'll improve performance enough to justify the added compensation, making you look like a risky hire to the hiring manager.

You'll look like a choice that is less likely to improve performance, and if hired, would force the hiring manager to offer their next hires lower salaries, likely having to take a few lower caliber new hires to make up for your higher cost. Or maybe not be able to hire as many employees on their team, but still have to meet/exceed goals with lower headcount.

If you're not improving performance, and the next lower cost new hires that the hiring manager could afford aren't improving performance (or reducing team performance), that hiring manager has a big problem, one that is likely to affect their career, raise and bonus. If the hiring manager had to get approval from higher levels to offer you higher compensation, then the hiring manager's boss, (boss's boss, or even higher) will probably hear about this bad hiring decision. A bad hiring decision that reduces performance could even cause your perspective hiring manager to lose their job.

Well, how can you eliminate this concern? Why not overwhelm them with success, rather than focusing your resume and interview on responsibilities/experience/qualifications/ tasks?

Every line on your resume (and sentence in your interviews) that proves success in increasing team performance, makes you look inexpensive compared to the improvements you can bring to the hiring manager's team. Anybody can do this, but very few job seekers have learned how to describe responsibilities/experience in a way that proves success.

And every line that focuses on responsibilities/experience (forcing your reader/interviewer to guess at your success), makes you look more expensive, not worth the added expense. In other words, it makes you look risky to hire.

Want to eliminate a hiring manager's risk in hiring you as an age 40+ job seeker? Prove that you can do more of what the hiring manager needs than other candidates, especially less expensive candidates than you.

That's why I teach my clients how to prove overwhelming success on their resume and in interviews. So that every line on your resume and every comment you make in an interview, overwhelms a hiring manager with your ability to improve their team's performance.

I teach my clients and subscribers how to make your resumes and interviews eliminate a hiring manager's concerns, make you look too good to ignore regardless of your age, appear inexpensive compared to other candidates, creating so many compelling reasons that hiring manager can't afford to hire someone else, even though you'll have higher compensation requirements.

Join me for my next free Resume Webinar (enroll at https://x.resumewebinar.com/Registration for no charge) and learn how to accelerate your job search, so you can find your next job faster in 2024.

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