By Jill E. Duffy
What’s wrong with workers in midlife and older? The answer is nothing, but the stereotypes are that they’re inflexible, unadaptable, unambitious, and incapable of learning new tasks. They have outdated skills, won’t work as hard as others, have health issues, and are resistant to change. These tropes are laughable, considering how workers have contorted themselves over the last 25 years since the boom of the internet, 9/11, a flood of new technologies, the financial crisis, and COVID.
The real problem is age discrimination, which shows up in hiring trends younger than some might assume. A meta-analysis of research found that discrimination in candidate selection starts when job seekers are “between 40 and 49, and rises gradually with increasing age.” And as you probably guessed, it affects women more than men.
The current low-fire, low-hire market is miserable for all job seekers, making it especially painful for women over 40. Hiring is down, unemployment is up, and underemployment is even worse. Throw in scam job ads, ghost jobs, and AI’s role in hiring, and finding work feels hopeless.
So how are women over 40 getting hired these days?
Resume Botoxing
In a perfect world, employers would use a blind-hiring practices to remove discrimination against women and older candidates. Failing that, the next best thing could be for candidates to blind their applications as much as possible through resume botoxing — a resume facelift, if you will.
The idea is to remove age identifiers from your CV, LinkedIn profile, and other materials. At the extreme end, some applicants are using younger photos of themselves, or editing recent photos to look younger.
Andrew Martin, a career coach with Crisp Resumes, explained that “Women in their 50s usually see much better results if they take 20 years off their resumes.”
One night not too long ago, a 45-year-old female client approached in a panic. “Jo” (not her real name) had four recent government jobs and 20 years of experience in the private sectors. She had been working as an executive assistant when her contract didn’t renew. She applied to more than 200 jobs over about six weeks and heard nothing. If she didn’t find new employment soon, she might lose her house.
So Martin botoxed her resume. They only put the last 10 years of experience on it and added a single line that read, “Previous experience can be provided upon request.'” Gone were any mentions of dates of graduation or certification. Another crucial step, said Martin, was spending time talking with Jo to figure out exactly what she wanted and tailoring her resume accordingly. Picking the right words is a human effort, he stressed, and not a job for AI.
Jo landed a job not long after.
Align Your Keywords, With a Human Eye
Keywords matter tremendously because of the way employers process incoming applicants. Applicant tracking systems (ATSs) typically scan uploaded PDFs, turn them into readable text, and collect and count keywords. Applicants might then be ranked in order, and only the top X percent will be reviewed by a human. Not every ATS or organization ranks in this way, but some do.
Tools like Jobscan promise to can game the ATS and revise your resume to get it into the top tier, though they aren’t highly reliable. One HR professional I spoke to explained that candidates who “optimize for the filter, not the fit” can be at a disadvantage, undermining their credibility by making them look like everyone else. It can also lead to applicants becoming disqualified if they misrepresent themselves by not checking the AI edits closely.
Rewrite Your Narrative After a Gap
Three years ago, Amy Phillips, now 55, got a new job in data governance. She had prior experience in technology and degrees in both business and computer science, but she also had a 15-year gap on her resume from taking time off to raise children.
Before kids, Philips racked up about five years of experience consulting, working on computer systems, software design, and software integration. In tech, however, being gone from the field for 15 years can put a person back at square one.
When Philips decided it was time to return to work, she told everyone about her interests, which were in data, and that she was job-hunting. “I looked online, on the job boards, on Indeed. I don’t think I was even on LinkedIn yet. But basically, how I got back into the workforce was really through networking,” she said.
A friend from her consulting days heard from another friend that Philips was available and reached out with a potential opportunity. Phillips was interested, but she still had to convince the hiring team that she met the qualifications, pass the interview, and explain that long break on her CV.
Phillips said she felt confident. “As I looked back, I had been working with data the whole time” while raising kids, she said. Her examples included things like storing and organizing addresses to send Christmas cards, and creating a database to collect data for all the kids at her children’s school during read-a-thons. She had loads of examples of working with data using professional software, but she still had to convince the hiring team that this experience amounted to something.
She highlighted her interest in and curiosity about data, and stressed her organizational and communication skills. “There were leadership positions that I had in volunteering and nonprofit work, working at my church and different organizations where I had been serving on boards,” she said, which all enhanced her qualifications and experience. The narrative she told about herself—aided by that initial referral and her early career experiences and degrees—came together as one cohesive story and got her the job.
Network, Network, Network
The benefits of networking early and often can’t be overstated, especially for mid-career and higher women because there are fewer jobs available for candidates at a higher level. Connecting with colleagues online broadens your reach, but telling people in person is valuable, too.
Talking to everyone you meet, whether they’re close friends or weak ties, opens more avenues to hearing about roles, sometimes before they’re advertised. Hiring teams love to get qualified candidates through referrals because it saves time and raises the trust factor.
How many people get jobs through networking? The numbers are all over the place but on the low end, it’s around 50 percent, and on the high end, 70 percent.
Martin the career coach sees a difference in how men and women leverage professional relationships. Because men are less likely to have a gap on their resume, they tend to have more stability among their network. “Say you have a colleague who has moved from one role to another. [A male job seeker] can call them and ask who’s getting poached or who’s getting hired. Or maybe they know who’s hiring.”
Women who’ve been out of the workforce for years may not have the same bountiful connections. “But,” says Martin, “they should leverage those relationships if they can.”
Chasing Opportunities and Putting Yourself Out There
In some fields, people are perpetually looking for the next gig. Mary, who prefers to use her first name only, works in entertainment. Early in her career, she worked on a major network TV show, but after age 40, she has focused on her own projects and getting directorial credits. The hitch with directing is the age-old problem of needing experience to get the job.
“I reached out to a few local theaters for informational interviews so I could see about transitioning to directing for theater,” she said. She met with two people, and one of them, a director, seemed promising. She emailed her a few times, asked to shadow her through one of her productions (which didn’t work out), kept in contact, and persisted in asking for an opportunity. Finally, more than a year after they first met, the director offered Mary the chance to shadow her through a show. The theater even agreed to pay Mary a small stipend for her work.
For another job, a filmmaker found Mary through a regional database of people who work in entertainment. “[I] put myself on over a decade ago,” she said. She couldn’t even remember if the database was vetted. Still, putting herself out there ended up getting her an assistant director role on a film, a boon for Mary’s trajectory.
Look Beyond the W-2
Being a full-time employee isn’t the only way to make a living. In looking for new work, some women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s start businesses or become independent consultants or coaches, putting their career future into their own hands.
Those lucky enough to not need full-time employment have even more latitude. Take the 59-year-old woman who was laid off from a corporate desk job, didn’t need to fully replace her previous income, and found new purpose in operating a forklift at a research base in Antarctica.
Rule Yourself In, Not Out
Another hurdle that keeps women from getting interviews and offers is they self-select out of applying for jobs in the first place.
Kim Anderson, founder and CEO of GreySource, an organization that combats workplace ageism, says the language in job ads and on company websites can push older women away. She gives the example of “work-hard, play-hard culture.”Women who are caretakers may skip right past that job, “not because it’s clear that they aren’t wanted, but when they read that language, they don’t see themselves.”
Martin’s advice to women is “don’t underestimate yourself. Know what you want to do, and you will get there.” He believes that narrowing down your search to one very specific type of role produces greater results than spreading yourself thin.
Women know they have to be resourceful, creative, savvy, and comfortable with change to survive. And we don’t have to do it alone.
Kim Anderson is founder and CEO of GreySource, an organization that combats workplace ageism. “[Gendered ageism] is largely unnamed. It’s often unacknowledged, and you need to find a network of people who will help you navigate that and highlight your greatest skills and strengths in a way that fits you back into talent pipelines,” she said. It’s less about calling it out and more about navigating it.