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I'm in my late 50s and lost my job last summer when the company I worked for closed their entire medical division. I had only been there 6 weeks and the new North American CEO who came in immediately closed my division. The general mgr was kind enough to write me a letter of recommendation explaining the situation and offered to speak on the phone with any prospective employers about my situation. The problem is how do I put this on my resume? A 6-week tenure at my last position will raise red flags immediately and I'm afraid I won't even get the chance to get a first interview. What I've done is leave this last position off my resume then when I'm interviewing, right up front I explain the situation and offer to send the recommendation letter and offer to let them speak to the former general mgr. But right away, that sets up a negative vibe for the interview. On top of that, on my resume I only list my work history from the late 90s forward. If I listed everything since the late 80s I would get zero offers for interviews. When they see my face they can see that my work history goes much farther back than my resume indicates.
So I feel like I'm stuck. I've had interviews where I'm called "seasoned" by interviewers who are just as seasoned as me. Doesn't make me feel any better about bringing something up totally unrelated to my skills and abilities. I had one situation where a recruiter contacted me and got me an initial interview. I thought it went well, they scheduled a 2nd interview with the VP sales. I received the Team invite, clicked yes, and was good to go. Then 2 days before the interview the HR person cancelled the interview, no reason given. She didn't reply to my request for a reason for the cancellation. The recruiter totally ghosted me despite texts and voicemails asking what happened. Was it because I'm older than they thought?
Anyway, I'm rambling now. Has anyone gone through this? It's frustrating applying for jobs where I can click every box in terms of my experience, skills and abilities only to hear nothing back -- in a supposedly robust job market.
I'd leave the 6 week job off my resume. What happened to the job you had before that? How long were you there? You may have to broaden your search for other types of jobs and employment situations.
I retired at 58 and a year later decided to go back to work. Based on my experience I got a 6 month contract as an IT contractor on the overnight/weekend shift. As a contractor I felt no age discrimination but I worked for an agency that sub contracted to another agency that sub contracted to the company. So I had no employee rights or benefits and could be fired without cause at any time.
I could see why the company did that, they had no risk. It was just cash for work as long as I was useful to them. I enjoyed it because I was good enough on the job to be of value in the position.
At that age I had no hope of getting a full time permanent job at any company. I also was pretty sure I'd only be offered the overnight/weekend shifts, because younger people usually don't want them.
Turns out the company offshored that job to India after my 6 month contract was over. 6 months after that contract ended I got an 18 month contract to work from home, which brought me to 62, and I signed up for SS.
I feel your pain - age discrimination is rampant. With that being said, I agree with the others that a layoff looks better than nothing. I also agree with Joe that if they are going to hold that against you, you do not want to work for them.
First, I would - under no circumstances - go back farther than 15 years on my resume.
Secondly, in my experience, the public sector is less discriminatory in their hiring processes than the private sector.
Third, do not lose hope - yes, you will sometimes see a disappointed face when you walk into an interview and they realize how 'old' you are, but there is nothing you can do about it except push forward.
For someone with a lot of experience, there is no "rule" saying you have to list everything on your resume. It's a "marketing slick" for your skills. So put in the accomplishments that will help. Leave the ones that won't off. If most of your roles have been multi-year, just put month/year on those jobs. And you can likely hide a very short stint. And honestly, if you have 20+ years of experience, a gap here or there isn't going to draw too much of a red flag.
For me - I have different versions of my resume. One simply highlights all my accomplishments in general on the first page and in the middle of the 2nd page is just a list of my past roles and it's just listed in years (e.g. Job 1, 2015-current, Job 2, 2012-2015...). I don't even bother with listing out a role description. It's not that relevant for certain jobs I'm applying for.
Now - if you are required to fill out a job application and they are asking you to list ALL jobs (usually going back x years), then I would include everything. And in your case, this is easy to explain as it was a company/division ceasing operations.
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