CV Writer Urges Millennials to Trim Experience and Graduation Dates to Counter Age Bias

A job description asks for ten years of related experience. A professional CV writer named Morgan says that is the line to read most carefully, and that the answer to a stalled job search is hiding in it about 90 per cent of the time. Her advice, posted in a video on TikTok, is aimed at millennials who are applying and hearing nothing back.

Her argument starts with age. She says a CV can make a candidate look too old, even a millennial. She cited figures in the video: over 90 per cent of people over 40 have experienced some form of age discrimination, and 40 per cent of millennials are now hiding some of their earlier work experience. The source does not say where those numbers come from. Morgan also pointed to a recent run of middle-manager lay-offs as something making the problem worse. Age bias in hiring, she said, has always existed.

Her fix is to trim. A common rule of thumb, she said, is to cut the work history off after ten years. A better method is to read the job advert and match it. If an employer asks for ten years of experience, she advised, do not list all twenty. Allow a buffer of two to three years at most, so no more than thirteen years for a ten-year requirement. She also advised removing the year you graduated from university, which would make your age harder to work out.

She gave a practical reason as well. If an employer asks for four or five years of experience, she said, that is probably all the salary budget allows for. Arrive with fifteen years on the page and you may look unaffordable. Morgan, who says she has written CVs for six years, calls this a little secret of the trade. A CV, in her words, is a marketing document: a flyer, not a memoir.

The backdrop is a hiring process that applicants describe as increasingly slow and laborious. Many are asked to upload a CV and then complete a separate online form with a long list of questions before an interview is even a possibility. Age discrimination is illegal in the UK. Age UK notes that the Equality Act protects people from it in every aspect of employment, including recruitment, terms and conditions, promotions, transfers, training and dismissal. The Act covers direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation. Such discrimination can be hard to prove, though, particularly at the stage of an application that simply goes unanswered.

Many commenters under the video were unimpressed. One asked what the point of the games was, since listing twelve years of manager or director roles would still let an employer guess you are in your 40s or 50s. Another said they had not had a single interview in more than two years and found it discouraging. A third summed up the bind: applicants are told they do not have enough experience, and now they have too much. One user asked whether employers can tell how long you have been in the job market from your graduation year. Morgan replied: take your graduation date off as well.

What remains to be seen is whether this kind of age-proofing becomes standard practice, or whether the doubts voiced in the comments prevail, as lay-offs and hiring bias continue to shape the market.