I hate it, but ageism does very much exist in hiring today, especially in startups.
A few things I recommend for the resume:
1) Do not put your graduation date on your resume. It is not relevant to whether you are qualified for the job, and the employer cannot legally ask this until background check phase.
2) You do not have to start your resume with your first job out of college. Instead, start with the first job you had that is directly relevant to the one to which you are applying. If you’re a Front End Developer, just 3 past roles with Javascript, JQuery, and Angular.JS, nothing about your time in the food service industry.
3) List skills under the heading of the relevant job, not at the top of the resume. I repeat, do not list your skills in one skillbarf at the beginning of the resume. This is meaningless to recruiters and hiring managers, as we then have no idea when you used what skill, for how long, and how recently. Otherwise, they’ll assume you’re using COBOL right now. Not good.
As far as the interview and the workplace goes… I’m afraid I will be the most un-PC former HR Director for saying this… but the “old guys” in the office seemed to all look a certain way, and that was: Shaved head, Tshirt, Jeans, Chucks.
Nobody can tell you are whiting or balding, and you’re dressing like you’re 25 while still being slightly timeless.
I hear that in Silicon Valley, people are getting plastic surgery to look younger to get tech jobs. That may be; I haven’t seen it in NY yet.
I wish it didn’t have to be so – and we should all try to push for change in the ways we can – but until things change, I hope this gets your Chuck covered foot in the door.
