Stating your age on a CV

brian ireland

I have been interviewing for staff for the last 4 days. Lots of the CVs had no age on them, maybe the law says you don’t need to put this on your CV, Trust me its a bad move not to put your DOB on your CV.

We can’t hire anyone under 18 and that’s it. We had more than 200 CVs with no age on them so they went in the waste folder. Why? Because we had 400 with the age clearly indicated on them and we had 40 jobs available.
Can I give you a tip if you are looking for a job?
1. State your age no matter how old or young you are.
2. If you are looking for part-time work- state the days or shifts you can work on your Application. This will make it very easy for an employer to decide if you can be called for an interview. If we just see “I am looking for a part time position” its no use as we have no idea what this means. You could be available 1.2.3.4 or five days.
3. We had loads of CVs from youth reach and these where seriously disappointing. They where missing phone numbers, home addresses, full names etc. This was dreadful and not help to the people looking for work as they went into the maybe see you later folder..

professore

Were instead of where.

professore

Were instead of where.

professore

Were instead of where.

shruikan2553

Putting your age on the CV is not the norm in Ireland. How often do you find people applying that are under 18? Surely you could maybe have a rough idea from the dates they were at school anyway

uck51js9zml2yt

You may have a meeting minim
minimum age policy but you cannot discriminate based on age, hence it's irrelevant.
And as said age can be determined roughly by education and employment history.

AltAccount

I'd never put my age on my CV.

I'm pretty sure a recruiter binning a CV because of a person's stated age, or refusal to state an age, is some kind of illegal.

candytog

Age should not be required on a CV. If the job requires that applicants are of certain age then that should be stated on the job description. Did the CVs not have education details? could you not figure out age from that? Sounds like a cop out to reduce HR work.

Thoie

It really depends on the position. If applying for professional roles, then putting your age on a CV looks very odd - your experience is what matters.

I'm guessing given that you have a cut off of 18-year-olds that it's not a highly skilled job? There is no legal reason why you can't hire people under 18 (unless the job is all night time work) - you just have to make sure that proper records are kept. 16 and 17 year olds are permitted to work a max of 8 hours between 6am and 10pm, or 11pm if it's a pub. It may be company policy not to bother dealing with that - it's extra hassle to deal with the paperwork.

As a "nice thing to do" you could send an email to Youth Reach and explain how poor a lot of the CVs were (and why), and suggest that they teach CV preparation. If your company are particularly civic minded, you could even offer to send someone in a few times a year to help with CV prep.

monflat

However I totally disagree with stating if you want part time work on "x" no of days

That's totally eliminating oneself from the competition already

If an employer can't interview potential "part time " employees then is the job worth it.

Also op did you word the advertised job correctly?

Thoie

AltAccount wrote: »

I'd never put my age on my CV.

I'm pretty sure a recruiter binning a CV because of a person's stated age, or refusal to state an age, is some kind of illegal.

No, it's not illegal to bin CVs for that. It would be illegal to discriminate against anyone on the basis of their age - say if you were throwing out CVs of anyone over the age of 50 automatically. An employer may state a minimum age on their job ad (you can only set a min of 16, 17 or 18 - nothing else).

AltAccount

monflat wrote: »

Also op did you word the advertised job correctly?

Good point - does the ad specifically say the minimum age requirements and the days/hours of work?

If you state that, and they still send in their CV, you shouldn't have to cull so many CVs or worry about them not stating their availability.

brian ireland

We don't have a HR department for a start.
You can quote the law till the cows come home. The reality is if an employer advertises a job and 40% of the applicants don't give their age and hours they can work they might be restricted in the offers they get.
If they submit CVs with no age or time they can work they will continue to have no cal backs.


This is a fact no matter how you mount you politically correct horse.. I know I am that employer..

shruikan2553

brian ireland wrote: »

We don't have a HR department for a start.
You can quote the law till the cows come home. The reality is if an employer advertises a job and 40% of the applicants don't give their age and hours they can work they might be restricted in the offers they get.
If they submit CVs with no age or time they can work they will continue to have no cal backs.


This is a fact no matter how you mount you politically correct horse.. I know I am that employer..

And as an employer you are in a very small minority to act like that. It's the first time I have ever heard of these complaints. Its not PC, its just not done.

Thoie

brian ireland wrote: »

We don't have a HR department for a start.
You can quote the law till the cows come home. The reality is if an employer advertises a job and 40% of the applicants don't give their age and hours they can work they might be restricted in the offers they get.
If they submit CVs with no age or time they can work they will continue to have no cal backs.


This is a fact no matter how you mount you politically correct horse.. I know I am that employer..

A properly worded ad (All applicants must be at least 18, if applying for temp work please state availability) would make your life easier. Yes, there'll always be one or two who don't read the instructions, but you can't expect people to know what you want on a CV.

Your personal preference is for this non-standard information, and you're dumping CVs of people who aren't mind-readers. Fair enough, it's your company. But coming on the Work & Jobs forum telling them that all jobs need this information is ridiculous. You haven't even stated what kind of role you're hiring for. As I said above there's a huge difference between hiring glass collectors for a nightclub, or hiring a head of brain surgery for a large hospital - the information to put on a CV will vary.

walshyp

Never but your D.O.B on a C.V. Doesn't matter if its a shop, Pub, Business company, I.T company, public sector etc. That's the worst advice I every heard!

Thoie

Come to think of it OP, if you're getting so many CVs, and want some specific information, yours may be the ideal situation for an application form.

Your application form can have fields for DOB, availability, other criteria that you need. You could restate beside the DOB field, for example, that applications will only be accepted from people 18 or older. Have copies printed out that you can hand to people who try to hand in CVs, or else make them available for download/emailing. It would make your life a lot easier, as you can filter the applications at a glance, as the info you need is in the same place on each page.

Mrs OBumble

OP, I would also interested to hear why you want home address on a CV? How is it relevant?

starlit

You are more likely to find Date of Birth by younger candidates with less qualifications/experience but the older they are and those gone to college and have bit more work experience is unlikely they have their DOB on CV unless requested by the employer or that its asked in an application form.

Home address and DOB I used to have it on CV but not anymore I stick with more relevant things on it. The home address should only be added with a Cover Letter if the applicant wishes to do that.

Redser87

Surely if your only concern is that applicants should be over 18, it would be just as quick to check the date they did their Junior/ Leaving cert as to be figuring out age from DOB? It's highly likely that anyone who did their Leaving in 2013 is now over 18. Can't imagine people would leave that important piece of information, assuming they stayed in school for long enough to do their exams of course - but even someone who chose to leave school early and who has their Junior, if they did it in 2010 (or even 2011), chances are they are already 18.

ABajaninCork

Thoie wrote: »

A properly worded ad (All applicants must be at least 18, if applying for temp work please state availability) would make your life easier. Yes, there'll always be one or two who don't read the instructions, but you can't expect people to know what you want on a CV.

Your personal preference is for this non-standard information, and you're dumping CVs of people who aren't mind-readers. Fair enough, it's your company. But coming on the Work & Jobs forum telling them that all jobs need this information is ridiculous. You haven't even stated what kind of role you're hiring for. As I said above there's a huge difference between hiring glass collectors for a nightclub, or hiring a head of brain surgery for a large hospital - the information to put on a CV will vary.

Not to mention unprofessional. Age (unless working in a nightclub or similar) and home addresses are not relevant to the job application at hand.

Guy:Incognito

AltAccount wrote: »

I'm pretty sure a recruiter binning a CV because of a person's stated age, is some kind of illegal.

Doesn't mean its not happening. I've spent the last year trying to get back in to a mechanic apprenticeship. I'm a lot older than the typical demographic that usually go for these jobs but on he other hand I have experience in the position and other industries. I find it very hard to even get interviews. Oft he few I have done you can see that they are going to hire an 18-20 year old out of school and so far that's what I can assume is happening, despite a couple of very good interviews along the way.

NZ_2014

brian ireland wrote: »

Can I give you a tip if you are looking for a job?

Can I give you a tip if you are looking to hire the best staff?

1. Don`t be so ridiculous as to dismiss people because they didn`t put their age on their CV.

Unbelievable.

skallywag

brian ireland wrote: »

We can’t hire anyone under 18 and that’s it.

Then state so in the Job Description.

Tarzana

On the address thing, I always include it because it shows that I live in the area. I suppose you could just borrow an address or something, but I don't see much of a problem with including your home address. Unless, and I'm positive this happens, you don't want to be judged on living in a less than salubrious area. Then I totally understand omitting it. I'd love to adopt a more idealistic viewpoint on that, but we all know some individuals will judge on nonsense like that and ignore the candidate's experience and achievements.

circadian

An applicant is not obliged to include a DOB on their CV and dumping applications on the basis that none were stated could be viewed as unfairly dismissing an applicant for not disclosing information they don't have to disclose.

Thoie

Tarzana wrote: »

On the address thing, I always include it because it shows that I live in the area. I suppose you could just borrow an address or something, but I don't see much of a problem with including your home address. Unless, and I'm positive this happens, you don't want to be judged on living in a less than salubrious area. Then I totally understand omitting it. I'd love to adopt a more idealistic viewpoint on that, but we all know some individuals will judge on nonsense like that and ignore the candidate's experience and achievements.

Again, it depends on the job you're going for. It might be useful for Burger King, who pay for taxis home after late shifts, and would probably prefer not to be sending someone in a taxi from Cork to Dublin.

If you're applying for that infamous "head of brain surgery" job, then the employer will assume that if you're applying for the job you can get yourself to and from the job without them having to care how you do it.

This goes back to the fact that there is only one single rule or tip for CV writing that covers all jobs - proofreading. Don't have stupid typos on your CV, don't leave a sentence half finished, don't tell them you attended college from 1929-1996.

Everything else is dependent on the job you're applying for. You don't have "a CV", you have the basics of CVs that you tailor to the job you're applying for.

Tarzana

Thoie wrote: »

Again, it depends on the job you're going for. It might be useful for Burger King, who pay for taxis home after late shifts, and would probably prefer not to be sending someone in a taxi from Cork to Dublin.

What? :pac:

barneyrubble46

I have to say this is the most terrible thing I have ever had a potential employer say, to bin a CV because the age is not stated is beyond belief. Why would I put my age on a CV, age does not determine what I can or cannot do. I would not put my Sex on a cv or the fact for example I am gay. total nonsense. I certainly would not like to work for the person who bins CV because the age is not on them, lets hope they go in the Confidential waste bin !I guess Brian Ireland you have not been discriminated against or perhaps your outdated view would be different, I bet you also offer jobs to the big boobed blonde young lady before the over weight gay person

Thoie

Tarzana wrote: »

What? :pac:

I was saying that for most jobs your address is irrelevant Some lower paid jobs that operate outside normal public transport hours pay for taxis for their employees to get home at the end of their shift. In that case, someone living closer to the place of work may have an advantage, as it will be cheaper to send them home. Dublin to Cork was an exaggeration, but if you had a Dublin city centre business that paid for taxis for staff, would you prefer someone who lived in Ranelagh or Skerries?

Tarzana

I don't think that's the only time it might be relevant. I've seen job ads for other types of jobs where it's been specified that someone local is required or preferred for various reasons. Awkward location, relocation costs not being offered, needing to familiar with the local area for whatever reason, training courses happening in the lead up to starting that someone living away for the meantime might not be able to attend.

emuhead

It's bad HR practice to ask for age on a CV. Asking somebody to tick a box to say they are at least 18 years would achieve the same purpose. Age, marital status, family circumstances are not relevant to your company and TBH it comes across as nosy the overemphasis on wanting a date of birth from candidates. I'm not saying that's your intention. I never have put my DOB on a CV, never been asked for it and it's never held me back. But I guess the companies I was dealing with had a more professional approach to recruitment.

seablue

I never put my age on my CV.

Anyway from your job history a potential employer will have an indication of your age. I mean if you have 12 years of work experience they will know you are over 18 :-)

Mrs OBumble

Thoie wrote: »

Again, it depends on the job you're going for. It might be useful for Burger King, who pay for taxis home after late shifts, and would probably prefer not to be sending someone in a taxi from Cork to Dublin.

Yeah - but if someone from Cork gets the job, they will be likely to be moving closer to it. In this case, home address would be meaningless.

corcaigh07

I've always had my DOB on my CV, I'm 29. It would be better to take it out?

skallywag

corcaigh07 wrote: »

I've always had my DOB on my CV, I'm 29. It would be better to take it out?

I don't see any harm at all in having it in, and in any case there will be other indicators within your CV which will (usually) give your age away, e.g. year you graduated, etc.

The point being made is more that an employer should not expect by default to have this included as part of the CV.

Thoie

Tarzana wrote: »

I don't think that's the only time it might be relevant. I've seen job ads for other types of jobs where it's been specified that someone local is required or preferred for various reasons. Awkward location, relocation costs not being offered, needing to familiar with the local area for whatever reason, training courses happening in the lead up to starting that someone living away for the meantime might not be able to attend.

Mrs OBumble wrote: »

Yeah - but if someone from Cork gets the job, they will be likely to be moving closer to it. In this case, home address would be meaningless.

Someone remind me in future not to make up random examples if we're going to pick them apart The Cork/Dublin thing was meant as a humorous exaggeration which obviously fell flat!

Yes, there are other reasons why an address might be useful, no, I don't think there is anyone working in Burger King Dublin who commutes daily from Cork by public transport.

Zubeneschamali

brian ireland wrote: »

We had more than 200 CVs with no age on them so they went in the waste folder. Why? Because we had 400 with the age clearly indicated on them and we had 40 jobs available.

Reminds me of David Brent in The Office, who takes half the CVs and dumps them in the bin unread. He doesn't want to hire any unlucky people.

Jim2007

The OP may have made a bad job of making their point, but the kernel of it is this: your best chance of getting to the next round is to make it as easy as possible for the recruiter to find all the information they need on your CV to make a decision about your application and do not assume for a minute that they will spend time ferreting out these details, because it is more likely that they will not!

If someone has to go through 200 resumes, no doubt they will start out being very diligent about it, but somewhere between resume 20 and resume 40 they are going to get tired doing this and they will simple switch to picking resumes that easily meet their criteria, that is human nature. Leave your age of your CV and don't bother putting your home address on it either, but by the same token do not be surprised if you don't make the cut for the interview round!

It does not matter if it is not PC or legally correct, it is what it is and you need to learn to deal with it, because human nature is not going to change.

Zubeneschamali

Jim2007 wrote: »

your best chance of getting to the next round is to make it as easy as possible for the recruiter to find all the information they need on your CV to make a decision about your application and do not assume for a minute that they will spend time ferreting out these details, because it is more likely that they will not!

The OP's best chance of hiring the best applicants was to consider all the CVs they received. Throwing 1/3 of them away like that means they probably hired 13 people who are worse candidates than people whose forms went in the bin.

Maybe they don't care, but then why have a process at all? Just grab 40 applications and bin the rest.

davo10

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

The OP's best chance of hiring the best applicants was to consider all the CVs they received. Throwing 1/3 of them away like that means they probably hired 13 people who are worse candidates than people whose forms went in the bin.

Maybe they don't care, but then why have a process at all? Just grab 40 applications and bin the rest.

You've missed the point, if every employer receives 40+ cvs for each post, it is impossible to differentiate many of the applicants from each other. You cannot interview them all so most cvs get binned on "technicalities", every employer will have their own petty likes/dislikes, most applicants may hate that but that's life.

Zubeneschamali

davo10 wrote: »

every employer will have their own petty likes/dislikes

Yes, so no point worrying about the OP's particular hangups. The next employer will have different ones.

Mrs OBumble

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

The OP's best chance of hiring the best applicants was to consider all the CVs they received. Throwing 1/3 of them away like that means they probably hired 13 people who are worse candidates than people whose forms went in the bin.

Maybe they don't care, but then why have a process at all? Just grab 40 applications and bin the rest.

Ahh, an employer doesn't necessarily want the best applicants.

Sometimes they want the cheapest one who is good-enough.

Yes, this can be shortsighted. But on the other hand, if you hire a highly experienced widget-woggler for a junior widget-woggling position then you have someone who is likely to get bored and leave as soon as a better job comes along - or to upset the other juniour staff in the team.

Tarzana

davo10 wrote: »

You've missed the point, if every employer receives 40+ cvs for each post, it is impossible to differentiate many of the applicants from each other. You cannot interview them all so most cvs get binned on "technicalities", every employer will have their own petty likes/dislikes, most applicants may hate that but that's life.

But there are prevailing conventions.

I know you said in a previous thread that you discount CVs with no referee details on. Most hiring or HR managers would be the complete opposite of this so the candidate is better off going with the odds. Yes, you might rub one hiring manager up the wrong way but that's way better rubbing 50 up the wrong way.

B.A._Baracus

Always put your age on your CV!!! Helps to build up a better profile of a person.
Never put your D.O.B. on a CV tho. That's your personal details because you would be combining them with your full name & address. That's a no no.

Thoie

Jim2007 wrote: »

The OP may have made a bad job of making their point, but the kernel of it is this: your best chance of getting to the next round is to make it as easy as possible for the recruiter to find all the information they need on your CV to make a decision about your application and do not assume for a minute that they will spend time ferreting out these details, because it is more likely that they will not!

If someone has to go through 200 resumes, no doubt they will start out being very diligent about it, but somewhere between resume 20 and resume 40 they are going to get tired doing this and they will simple switch to picking resumes that easily meet their criteria, that is human nature. Leave your age of your CV and don't bother putting your home address on it either, but by the same token do not be surprised if you don't make the cut for the interview round!

It does not matter if it is not PC or legally correct, it is what it is and you need to learn to deal with it, because human nature is not going to change.

My point is that if you have some specific non-standard criteria that you're using to select candidates, then the CV route is not the right way, you'd be much better off asking people to fill out an application form that you've designed, and know it's got everything you want in there. That way if you want to throw out the CVs of people under 18, you know you're actually doing that, rather than throwing away random applications.

Most professional roles do not need either your home address or your date of birth, there are other criteria they're looking for (maybe PersonX will throw out any CVs that don't have a specific professional qualification on them). All people can go on to decide what goes into their CV/application is what appears in the job ad. If the job ad states criteria x,y,z, then yes, you can expect your CV to be binned if you don't include or meet those criteria. If I dump all CVs for "Head of Brain Surgery" because they don't list their favourite colour - I'm doing something wrong.

WoollyRedHat

davo10 wrote: »

You've missed the point, if every employer receives 40+ cvs for each post, it is impossible to differentiate many of the applicants from each other. You cannot interview them all so most cvs get binned on "technicalities", every employer will have their own petty likes/dislikes, most applicants may hate that but that's life.

But it's arbitary, because most employers with the tiniest bit of deduction can figure out whether said applicant is 18 or under by looking at both education and work experience, as already stated.

B.A._Baracus

WoollyRedHat wrote: »

But it's arbitary, because most employers with the tiniest bit of deduction can figure out whether said applicant is 18 or under by looking at both education and work experience, as already stated.

Thats very true.
Only problem is that most employers will have loads of CVs in front of them. Barely giving them any time. Sure whats the believed time... 8 seconds for looking at a cv from employers? Sad to say but I doubt most employers would mentally figure it out. They would simply go on to the next cv.

Personally, i'd rather just put my age on my CV to stop all that.

davo10

Tarzana wrote: »

But there are prevailing conventions.

I know you said in a previous thread that you discount CVs with no referee details on. Most hiring or HR managers would be the complete opposite of this so the candidate is better off going with the odds. Yes, you might rub one hiring manager up the wrong way but that's way better rubbing 50 up the wrong way.

You know Tarzana, I actually came around to the populist convention on that one, next time around I won't be looking for referees to be stated, I recognise that I was wrong on that one. But next time around when I have 40 cvs in front of me and only want to interview 5, I'll bin the other 35 for some other reason. That's the way it works when you can't interview everyone that applies and who meet the minimum requirements for the job.

Diziet

I don't see why employers would spend any time figuring out someone's age. I have looked at plenty of CVs and done plenty of interviews; employers do not expect an age on the cv at all. At worst it leaves them open to a discrimination claim.

davo10

Diziet wrote: »

I don't see why employers would spend any time figuring out someone's age. I have looked at plenty of CVs and done plenty of interviews; employers do not expect an age on the cv at all. At worst it leaves them open to a discrimination claim.

Only if they state that is the reason for you not getting the job, have you known an employer to say "you are not getting this job because you are too old"?

The fact is that some employers want a young, enthusiastic employee who wants to make a name for themselves rather than a middle aged person who is comfortable just doing what the job requires. Others want an experienced person who knows the ropes rather than a young whipper snapper who thinks he/she knows it all. Applicants really don't know what sets them apart from other applicants at cv stage, it could be some whim on the employers part, but if you think it might make a difference, why not include your age, you never know it could get you an interview, or not as in OPs case.