3 Resume Sections That Beat Age Discrimination

This week, Jeff and I are tearing up the "rulebook" to show you how to actually use your degrees and certifications to sell yourself.

The biggest mistake we see isn't about where you went to school, it’s about how you present that information. We dive deep into why you should almost always remove your graduation dates to protect yourself from age discrimination, and how to handle those "in-progress" or unfinished degrees so they still work in your favor.

We’re talking about:

• The golden rule of resume real estate: top vs. bottom
• How to list degrees you didn’t actually finish
• Why your graduation date may be hurting your chances
• Using “Relevant Coursework” to your advantage
• The LinkedIn Learning “trap” and how to avoid it
• When a hobby like hiking or triathlons belongs on a resume
• How to “double dip” on awards to catch a recruiter’s eye
• Handling expired certifications the right way

Listen in to help us help you give yourself the best chance of landing your Next Job… NOW :)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Like the rule with resumes isn't education goes at the top or education goes at the bottom. The rule with resumes is give them the information they care about most at the top. So if your best selling point for this job is that you took a degree that is directly tied to this job, that's the most relevant thing that should go at the top. But if you've been working for five, ten years, twenty years, probably the most relevant thing that they care about most is the work that you've done. And in that case, that goes to the top.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

And I'm Jeff, and I have a lot of questions about job searching. Together, we're going to talk about everything you need to know about landing your next role. This episode, we're going to talk about your education, your certificates, or any of that kind of additional certifications that you can put on your resume.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

But when we're talking about this, when we're talking education certifications, we're talking legit formal degrees. Is that right? Or does it have to be credited? Like what's our focus here?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

I mean, it all counts, Jeff. When we're talking about what can go in our education section of our resume, this could be reserved for just your formal college, university degrees, diplomas. Or we could be lumping in everything we've done. Like if you only have a bachelor's degree and you have a couple certifications and a couple of training courses you've taken, you could put that all in an education section. But if you maybe have a couple of degrees and you want to have those sit on their own, and then you want to have a separate section for certifications and training, that can be its own section. There aren't necessarily rules for how we organize this stuff. There are rules for how we list the exact experiences in our education. But in terms of how we arrange it, we're pretty flexible.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Tell me more about these rules.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

So what rules do we have when we're listing education? So the most important rule when we're listing education in our resume is that we have to have finished the degree to list the full name of the credential. So you can say Bachelor of Arts in Professional Writing only if you've completed that degree. If you haven't completed it, you could say professional writing studies at the school, and that's fine, but you can't write that full degree title unless you completed it.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

So they see, okay, you're in progress, this is your anticipated graduation date. That's good.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

If you didn't finish, so you only made it two two years through, life happens, and we leave. We can still put it on there, maybe, you know, visual arts studies at ABC University. Yeah. Would you recommend listing like a couple courses that are kind of relevant to that role? So if I'm applying to like a graphic designer role, then I'm gonna say, well, I took, you know, graphic design 101 and then maybe talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Yeah. Absolutely. Because like the thing we want people to take away from our education is that we learn stuff, right? So like if you took all the courses that mattered for your work that you're doing now, list those. Like, it's okay to put bullet points under your education. And one of the common bullet points is relevant courses completed.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

In what scenario are you included are we elaborating on education versus just having it there? When are we bringing attention to it?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

The most uh common situation is when you are a student or a new graduate. Right. Like for those folks, I would like to see a bullet point about maybe a big capstone project you completed. I would like to see the relevant courses completed bullet point. We maybe even have bullet points about our grade point average or any academic awards we've won, study abroad. Like those are all things for students and new grads to list on the resume under their experience.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

And you've also talked about like normally, sorry, I'm jumping around a little bit here, but for students in particular, that's the time where education is important because it's going to typically replace professional experience.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Well, yeah, when when you don't have a lot of professional experience or none, it is the most relevant thing you've done. Like the rule with resumes isn't education goes at the top or education goes at the bottom. The rule with resumes is give them the information they care about most at the top. So if your best selling point for this job is that you took a degree that is directly tied to this job, that's the most relevant thing that should go at the top. But if you've been working for five, ten years, twenty years, probably the most relevant thing that they care about most is the work that you've done. And in that case, that goes to the top.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

So this has nothing to do with ATS scanners and the way it's read. It's it's about selling yourself and putting the important information where they need it.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, if you want your education to show up properly in an ATS scanner, just make sure you call that section education.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

That's and then do you have a certain structure that you have to follow, like Bachelor of Arts at university? Now we're not going to include dates because we don't do that.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

No dates, which we should talk about now that we brought it up. Yeah. So for ATS, you do want a nice clear section that is education or education and training, education and certificates, something standard like that. Right. We want our degree listed with its full name, bachelor of blank, and then the field of study, economics, English, whatever, and then the school's full name, and uh then maybe the location of the school if you want. Um, no dates. Why not? You constantly talk about not including dates. Don't put your graduation date on your resume. They will use that for age discrimination purposes. They will look at what year you graduated, they will assume that you finished your degree when you were 22 years old. They're gonna do the math from there. That is a terrible thing you can do on your resume.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

So it has nothing to do about like, oh, that schooling is outdated. So it's not rel it's not recent. It's really about, oh, you graduated that long ago, I can determine your age.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah. Because like the schooling being outdated, like, no one cares. Most of these companies are hiring who require like a bachelor's degree, are doing it because that's what was always done. They don't care if you took a history degree 20 years ago. They could care less about what grades you had, what classes you took. They're just checking a box because that's always what's been done, and it's very pointless.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

So there's some flexibility in where things go in your resume. So if we're looking at a template and you're like, well, we have it listed at the bottom. That doesn't mean we can't cut that and put it up top.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah. Like you'll find on my website, greglangstaff.com, we've lots of great ATS optimized resume templates. All of them pretty much have education at the bottom. Just copy and paste that section and put it above the experience if that's most relevant to you. Very easy to do.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Now, you mentioned earlier we don't have to, we can put education and certificates. Can this be non-college, non-university boot camps, uh Google certifications, LinkedIn learning? Is there any criteria to put in the education section?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Not necessarily. Like we love certificates, we love boot camps, even like Coursera and LinkedIn Learning, those are great as well. Now, what I would do is like if you have a couple of what I would do is if you have some properly credentialed degrees, like a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, your CPA maybe, or your your project management professional, the PMP, like give those their own area, their own breathing room. And then if you have a bunch of Coursera, LinkedIn learning certifications or or training you completed through your work, like maybe we make that a separate section. Additional training.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Professional development, work workshops, yeah, online classes, online courses. Yeah?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, absolutely. And like that's the kind of stuff we keep separate if we have a ton of it. Again, if you only have one degree, two trainings like that you want to mention, you can put them all together. Again, it's just about helping people navigate your resume.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

If we have a bunch of certifications and we want to list them, do we list everything we've ever done? Or do we only list things that are no longer expired that are not expired? So uh active certifications.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Uh, I mean, prioritize active certifications. But if you have say um if you have a certification that is expired, but it's super relevant. Let's say I was going to manage the water park that I used to work at. Okay. I don't have my lifeguarding certification anymore. I don't even have an active CPR. But I might want to mention that I had those and that they are expired. And I'd be very clear in brackets, this is expired. Uh, to show that I know how that stuff works. I've been in that environment, I could manage people with with that, and if need be, I could go get that training again. I've done it before. Like, that's better than nothing. Okay. Can I speak on something else that like that question kind of prompted? Please. So you said, like, what should we include? Yeah. In terms of our training and certifications. I have to talk about LinkedIn learning for a second. Yeah. So LinkedIn Learning, I I like it. I love it, actually. I love it. Yeah. Like you can get all these certificates in like an hour or two. Awesome. Or like go deep on something, like a five, six, eight-hour course, and like really know it. And I've learned stuff from LinkedIn Learning that has really helped me in my jobs. There is a LinkedIn Learning problem, which is the easy access to this information, to the certificates, to the training, has some people going a little bit a lot overboard. And I've had to talk clients down off of this ledge of including 75 LinkedIn learning certifications on their LinkedIn profile in their resume. Like it cheapens it. You lose so much value from having 40 LinkedIn learning certificates. Suddenly, it doesn't mean anything. Like it's nice you're a lifelong learner, but I may as well be listing every podcast episode I've ever listened to on this industry.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

That's an interesting point. Is there a way that you would recommend reframing? Is there anything else when we're thinking about our additional certifications, additional? I know we've touched on hobbies in previous episodes. Your point has always been if the hobby can add value to your resume because it might proactively address concerns. So, like uh if you're an active hiker and your age is being in question to show that, like, oh, I'm an active, healthy uh person, maybe you can include a hobby. But should we what what other sections are there in a resume?

SPEAKER_01 12:35

So we don't list hobbies in our resume with two exceptions. If your hobby is so cool that someone's gonna bring it up and ask you about it every single time, yes. The other example of a time when it's okay to add a hobby to your resume is if you are concerned about age discrimination and your hobby is a healthy active lifestyle thing. If you have 25 years of experience you need to talk about in your resume, and you do triathlons, those should both go in. Because what that triathlon or the other healthy active hiking hobby says is I am not going to be gone for like health medical purposes. Now, this is terrible that employees, employers are like are judging based on this, but we have to know it's in the back of their head, and sometimes it's in the front of their head. So we need to just quell those concerns, and that's how we do it.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

Yeah, and the only other um additional areas that I have listed here are things like publications, if you've been mentioned in news articles, awards. Awards, languages. Yeah. Now, is this when we're going into a third page, or do we is this a second page filler?

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Like languages need to be there if you are a if like it's required for you to speak multiple languages in the job you're applying to.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Although, like, you could also take care of that in one little spot in your skills section, bilingual brackets, Spanish, like for French, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Yeah. But awards I would say are a priority section.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Like priority, don't cut them.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Don't no, don't cut awards. Everyone loves an award winner.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

People like to hire award winners. I just feel like it's it. This is my challenge with awards, is it takes up way too much space in real estate on our two-page resume.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

No, I think that's a I think that should be prioritized. How were where do you format that? Well, it might be at the end, it might be a section that says awards and then it's the list of awards. Backup plan, you just put the award as a bullet point under the job when you won the award. Also worthwhile. So it doesn't need to be its own section.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

We can integrate awards right into the bullet.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

It could be. I like to do it as many times as possible. I if I have room, I'll do a bullet point about the award and then I'll mention it in the awards section. And on top of all that, in my frontline like branding, when I'm naming what I am, the line right after your name, I would say award-winning resume writer. Yeah. Like award-winning environmental advocate. Like, what if you've won awards for your work, award-winning business development leader? Like, call yourself an award-winning this.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Double dip. Yeah. Don't be afraid to double dip. Triple dip. If you won an award, you earned it. It deserves to go on your resume. Yes. I like that. Any other additional certifications or things that you think we should prioritize or deprioritize?

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Um, I mean deprioritize experience that's more than 15 to 20 years old. But we don't we don't have to talk about ageism in this episode. Go listen to the ageism episode, but like your odds of getting a job go up if you do not go past 20 years of experience. I'd say like if you're in a highly technical role, a technical proficiencies section could be worth your while instead of trying to jam all your technical skills into like a key skills section.

SPEAKER_00 16:21

Yeah, you have a di you have a couple different ways in your templates that do that, where like you can do skills and technical skills, or you would sometimes I see you just list the technical skills separated by a comma. Yeah. And you're just like, here you go. And it's at the bottom.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, because sometimes like if we're highly technical, we don't want to use our key skills section for that. Right. Because there's like gonna be 30 things we need to list there, so we'll give it its own section. Yeah. Um, yeah, that's another section I would include in the resume. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 16:51

All right. Perfect. Um, well, thanks so much. I think it's time for our unusual interview where we ask each other questions that we hope you never get asked. If your life outside of work was graded like a school report card, what subject would you get an A in? I would hope husbandry. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, it's my top priority. Oh my god. I'm so glad you didn't ask me this question, and then I wouldn't say being a husband, and then I'd feel bad. That's the right answer. What would you have said? What's your second priority? Well, no, my first priority is being a husband. I'm not, you can't trick me. No, I that's why I just I literally just said, what's your second priority? Second? Being a good son. Yeah. Okay, we're taking this too far. Okay, we're taking it too far. Being a good husband.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Okay, my other A plus has definitely been uh training for Spartan. I've taken I'm taking it very seriously this year. So you're getting an A in gym class? I'm yeah, I'm getting an A in gym class.

SPEAKER_00 17:58

Health and fitness?

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Yeah, and maybe like a B plus in improv right now.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Hey, good job, okay.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

I got a question for you, Jeff. Ask me anything. Oh no, I'm torn between two questions. I'm gonna ask the more gruesome one. I feel like the audience has been waiting for this. A gruesome one? Yeah. Worst injury you've had uh as a child.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

As a child?

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

I mean, the one that stands out is like catching a frisbee in the mouth and then having half of my tooth replaced. That's fake. Frisbee? Yeah. I caught I tried to catch a frisbee. My dentist was asking me about it the other day. Really? They're like, what is that? Can I ask what happened? Um, because like as a child, it was like a significant part of my tooth. But now it's just a tiny little corner. Because I was like, it was my first adult tooth, and I immediately tried to catch a frisbee like a dog.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

I can't tell you. But you were purposely trying to catch it with your mouth.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

I like to say that, but no, I just have bad hand-eye coordination for a seven-year-old. So well, thank you so much for tuning in to our uh Next Job Now podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show, leave a rating, and share it with someone who's looking to update their resume. You can grab a free template, some free resources, all on Greg's website, greglangstuff.com. Join us next time. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.