PSA: Stop putting your graduation year on your resume

I do hiring for a small tech company in Austin, and I see so many resumes where people list their graduation year from 15 or 20 years ago. This just tells me your age and opens the door for bias. I only care about your last 5 years of experience, not when you got a degree. If you graduated before 2015, leave the year off. Has anyone else noticed this helping their callbacks?

2 comments

2 Comments

grayc2716d ago

Wait, are you saying you actually think older workers are getting fewer callbacks because of their graduation year, or is this more about you trying to help them dodge age discrimination from other hiring managers? Because I've noticed a weird trend where some folks in hiring just assume anyone who graduated before 2010 can't keep up with modern tech stacks, and that's a real problem. But on the flip side, if someone has been working for 20 years, listing a graduation year from 2005 is just noise that doesn't tell me how they've grown or what they actually know now. It's like putting your SAT score on there too, it just doesn't matter after a certain point. So are you seeing this bias more from younger hiring teams or from older ones who should know better?

the_cameron16d ago

Oh man, you know what, I actually used to be on the other side of this. I always thought leaving the grad year off seemed sneaky, like you were hiding something. But a couple years back I sat in on a hiring round where a guy with 15 years experience got passed over, and I swear half the team fixated on his 2006 graduation date like it was a red flag. That was the moment it clicked for me. It's not about hiding anything, it's about making sure someone's actual skills and recent work get a fair look before anyone starts doing the math in their head.

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